T he people, and what they did there, linger in memories more than the building itself: Newly pledged fraternity members performed a step show. Colleagues gathered around the coffee pot.

Rufus B. Atwood Research Facility reopened, newly renovated, in October 2020, with 15 research laboratories, classrooms, a teaching laboratory, and offices for 30 faculty and staff and approximately 100 students. The $7.4 million renovation was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The building has been part of Kentucky State University's campus since the 1970s. Originally a dining hall called Underwood, the building now known as Atwood has undergone two renovations in the last four decades.

In the late 1970s, Derrick Graham— now representing Kentucky’s 57th district in the state House— was a student who swapped food with his friends in the Underwood cafeteria. Administrative assistant Susan Templeton’s office was upstairs, where she could smell chitlins when they were on the menu.

“You would get a lot more odor than at other times,” Templeton said. Other smells from her many years in the building come back to her— popcorn popping in the microwave across from her office, cinnamon coffee that was the favorite of one of her colleagues, pawpaws after a tasting contest.

A student at the university from 1976 to 1980, Graham remembers Underwood as a place of community.

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