BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Virginia Tech has reopened the section of the academic building where a student gunman killed 30 people nearly two years ago in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The university held a ceremony Friday to mark the reopening of the west wing of the second floor of Norris Hall. The 4,300-square-foot area has been converted into six new rooms and laboratories and will house the new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.
The Center will be led by Jerzy Nowak, former head of the Department of Horticulture. His wife, French instructor Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, died in the massacre.
The roughly $1 million renovation to the section of the building started in the fall and was finished last month. Gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 students and instructors in the building, then himself, on April 16, 2007. Earlier that day he killed 2 students in a dormitory.
Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
