An $8 million gift to the University of Wisconsin School of Human Ecology is the largest private donation given to the school in its hundred-year-old history, and perhaps the largest given to any Human Ecology school in the country, according to the school’s dean, Robin Douthitt.

The gift of UW alumni Nancy and Albert Nicholas was announced Wednesday morning. It will be used to remodel and add on to the department’s building.

“We are currently living and working in a building that is 90 years old and doesn’t meet our [current] needs,” Douthitt said, adding that the building is too small to house many classes or research and faculty is “literally squeezed into closets.”

The new building will bring the entire school under one roof for the first time, according to a UW press release.

“We just celebrated our centennial [last year],” Douthitt said. “[This donation] will allow us to expand and renovate — it is so important for our work in the next century.”

Ongoing renovation plans began in 2001. The project will cost an estimated $40 million, of which more than $17 million will come from private donations, according to the release.

UW Chancellor John Wiley, who appeared in a press conference Wednesday with Douthitt to announce the donation, said in a release that the donation will have a “transforming impact on the school’s programs.”

UW senior Jessica Heinz is a family and consumer journalism major, which is housed within the Human Ecology school.

“I think it’s a great thing for the school,” Heinz said. She added the donation may help draw more awareness to a discipline not many people know about.

Although she won’t see any of the building changes before graduating, Heinz said having the department share one building would be nice.

“I’ve only had one or two classes in the [Human Ecology] building,” Heinz said. “It’ll help bring the school together. It seems so scattered as it [is].”

The building, which Douthitt described as architecturally unique, will undergo significant changes once the renovations begin in 2007.

“We will gut the inside of the building, leaving the [building’s] façade unchanged,” Douthitt said.

Among the changes will be a modern research preschool facility, a graduate student office, wireless study areas and a consolidation of faculty office and research spaces, which will help improve student access to faculty, according to the release.

“This is a transforming gift,” Douthitt said. “We have a very talented faculty that is very interdisciplinary — bringing all together [in the same building] will enhance the already high level of collaboration.”