Faculty and students will no longer be able to use the University Printing Center in the Student Services Building – the service has been discontinued.

The center, which was primarily used by faculty to make copies, will not be reinstated, and three workers are temporarily out of jobs, said Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs.

“When I look at layoffs, I think, ‘We downsize, we cutback, you lost your job, but you’ll be hired back,” Cooley said.

The employees are working with human resources, trying to find a place that could utilize their services, Cooley said, but he was unsure if any had found jobs within the university.

Clay Hopkins, director of Information Technology Services, who, according to Cooley, worked with finding those employees jobs, was unavailable for comment.

It’s also uncertain how much money the university would save by dropping the service, but Cooley said he was expecting a significant amount.

It took $300,000 in salary and supply expenses to operate the building, not to mention the amount needed to update the equipment, Cooley said.

The university will not save $300,000 on its closure however, he said. Copy Express in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union will incur some of the cost because services were added to compensate for the printing center’s closure.

Copy Express will now have desktop delivery, something neither the printing center nor Copy Express ever had before, Cooley said.

“We want to provide the best service at the best price,” he said.

Last year Wilbur Hutson, director of the facility, retired, causing the business affairs office to take a look at the service to see if it was a good idea to hire a new director. According to Cooley, it wasn’t.

After reviewing the center’s status, Cooley said the equipment was too outdated and it would be too expensive to restore the center and keep up with the times.

Currently, the building is not being used, but plans are in the works.

Cooley said he and his colleagues were thinking of expanding office space for Information Technology Services.