Higher Education

The University of Minnesota is planning an $85 million renovation of the 87-year-old Tate Laboratory of Physics in Minneapolis. The project will provide modern lecture halls and classrooms, instructional labs, faculty offices, collaborative study spaces, conference rooms, and dedicated space for the Fine Theoretical Physics Institute and the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics. The building will also accommodate teaching and research programs of the School of Earth Sciences.

Arkansas Tech University will begin construction in October of 2014 on a 20,273-sf allied health building on the Ozark campus. Supported by $6 million in revenue bond funding, the two-story facility will provide technology-rich teaching labs and clinical simulation suites as well as faculty and staff offices, three computer labs, and a testing center. Completion is expected in November of 2015 with occupancy in spring of 2016.

The University of Manitoba is partnering with Magellan Aerospace to create the Advanced Satellite Integration Facility. The 6,000-sf ASIF will be located at Magellan's Winnipeg site and will be jointly funded and operated with the University. The project will support the simultaneous assembly, integration, and testing of up to three satellite buses, and will also serve as a training center for satellite engineering and production.

The Molecular Engineering and Sciences Building (MolES) at the University of Washington demonstrates that flexible university science facilities can encourage collaboration and accommodate unknown occupants, but be mindful of the need for a variety of dedicated meeting spaces and private areas, and the potential need for a shift in the office/lab culture and the mindsets of the facility’s users.

In the concluding Open Forum/Town Hall session of Tradeline’s Tradeline’s 2013 College and University Science Facilities Conference, moderator Derek Westfall, president of Tradeline, and subject matter commentators Kelly Cramm, senior associate at Henderson Engineers, Inc., and Samir Srouji, principal with Wilson Architects, led an interactive knowledge exchange on questions posed by conference attendees. This is an edited transcript of that exchange.

The University of Montana is planning to build the $32 million Missoula College on East Broadway in Missoula, Mont. The four-story, 105,000-sf building will house 30 disciplines and programs from the former UM College of Technology, now renamed Missoula College. Designed by StudioForma Architects in Bozeman, the project will provide classrooms, teaching labs, conference rooms, faculty offices, a temperature-controlled environment, and a library. Construction will begin in early 2015 with completion expected in mid-2017.

Panola College broke ground on the $35 million W.C. Smith Health Science Center in May of 2014 in Carthage, Texas. The 76,000-sf facility will provide science classrooms, a simulation training lab, a lecture hall, and teaching labs for programs in nursing, biology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and microbiology. Completion is expected in July of 2015.

Samford University is building the $30 million Brock School of Business in Birmingham, Ala. Designed by Davis Architects, the four-story, 73,270-sf facility will feature a 400-seat forum, classrooms, interactive meeting rooms, an investment portfolio suite, and two technology-rich teaching labs. Completion is expected in fall of 2015.

The Margaret Murie Building for life sciences sets the stage for a more collaborative approach to teaching and research at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF). The first new biology building on campus in more than 40 years, it replaces the siloed legacy lab buildings housing one PI for each lab that would be used only 30 percent of the time.

The University of Arizona is planning to build the $136 million Biosciences Partnership Building in Phoenix. Supporting collaborative research, the 10-story, 245,000-sf facility will be located adjacent to the university’s new cancer center currently under construction on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. Construction will begin by year-end 2014 with completion expected in early 2017.

Morgan State University is building the $80 million Earl G. Graves Sr. School of Business and Management in Baltimore. The 140,000-sf facility will include classrooms, a lecture hall, a trading floor, a teaching kitchen, and 10 hotel-style rooms. Occupancy is expected by fall of 2015.

The new six-story, 104,000-sf Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center for Health Education provides the first new home for medical education at Duke University since 1930. The facility includes a 400-seat meeting room/conference center, a lecture hall, and two floors of teaching and research laboratories, including a full floor dedicated to clinical simulation. It is centrally located on the medical campus, close to Duke University Hospital, laboratory and research buildings, medical clinics, and the Duke Cancer Center.

The Karolinska Institute is planning the second phase of construction at the Medical Research Laboratory in Solna, Sweden. Project developer Akademiska Hus AB has awarded Skanska a $61 million contract to construct a nine-story, 183,000-sf interdisciplinary research building. The first phase of construction at the Biomedicum campus is a $190 million, 678,000-sf facility, which is also being built by Skanska with completion slated for 2018.

The Greenville Health System (GHS) is capitalizing on the combined strength of its long-standing commitment to education and its partnerships with regional universities to flip the model of the academic health center and create a “clinical university.”

The University of Colorado is planning to renovate an existing facility in Boulder to accommodate life sciences research. Providing vivarium and laboratory space, the 60,000-sf facility will enable several animal research programs to be consolidated in a single location. The cost of the purchasing the property is $7.5 million and the University will invest $10.4 million to renovate the building. Construction is expected to begin in spring of 2015 with occupancy in the fall.