Western Washington University has renamed its Chemistry Building after President Emerita Karen W. Morse.

Morse served as the university’s president from 1993 to 2008. During her tenure, a number of new campus facilities were built.

Morse is also credited with improving the school’s student-faculty ratio through her leadership.

“Over the course of her 15-year tenure as president, Karen Morse led Western through a period of tremendous growth—of the campus, the faculty and the student body—while elevating its national reputation, setting the university on a trajectory to realize its present and future strengths,” said Peggy Zoro, chair of WWU’s board of trustees, in a press release.

The Chemistry Building (now the Karen W. Morse Hall) was completed in June 1993, with the chemistry department moving into the new building from Haggard Hall during the summer of that year. A 4,300 square-foot addition was added to the west side of the building several years ago to provide more research and instructional space.

In addition to the renamed building, a lecture hall in WWU’s Science, Mathematics and Technology Education (SMATE) Building has been named after Joe Morse (Joe and Karen Morse are married), a retired WWU chemistry professor and the first director of Science Education.

As the first director of SMATE, Joe Morse provided the operational base for the new building and, working with the departmental faculty in the sciences and the Woodring College of Education, established the framework for SMATE’s faculty and staff appointments.

A dedication ceremony for both the building and the lecture hall will be held at a later date.