Higher Education

Just one year after Wellesley College trustees approved a long-term campus renewal plan, the college had three projects in construction and six in design. In all, some $137 million worth of work, roughly 25 percent of the total plan, is currently underway, thanks to Wellesley’s bold approach: At once sweeping and granular, the process departed from traditional master planning by employing multiple architecture firms and incorporating up front many activities typically not seen months or even years into the design workstream.

Oregon State University will begin construction in March of 2015 on a $40 million facility for the School of Chemical, Biological and Ecological Engineering. The three-story, 58,000-sf Johnson Hall will provide interdisciplinary laboratories for collaborative research, faculty offices, classrooms, and a center for engineering student recruitment and retention. The project architect is SRG Partnership with Research Facilities Design (RFD) as laboratory programming and design consultant.

James Madison University is building a $65 million facility for the College of Health and Behavioral Studies (CHBS) in Harrisonburg, Va. Designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering, the six-story, 150,000-sf project will provide collaborative labs and classrooms for four of the university’s CHBS programs, including nursing. The building will include simulation training suites as well as administrative and faculty offices. Construction began on the facility in fall of 2014 and completion is expected in June of 2016.

The new three-story Bertelsmeyer Hall, home of the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, contains wet and dry research labs, classrooms, 19 faculty offices, lecture halls, and highly specialized labs and high bay spaces. Sixty percent of the building’s net square footage is dedicated to research space, and 40 percent to teaching spaces and offices.

The University of Texas broke ground in February of 2015 on a $20 million expansion of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) in Austin. Designed by O’Connell Robertson, the 38,000-sf building will include instructional spaces, an auditorium, and student computer labs. The three-story facility is sited adjacent to TACC's existing building on the J.J. Pickle Research Campus and is expected to open in January of 2016.

Purdue University is planning to build the $50 million Indiana Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in West Lafayette, Ind. Located in the Purdue Research Park, the 62,000-sf facility will support the creation of advanced composite materials and will feature production simulation and 3D printing technologies. The center is supported by funding from the Department of Energy and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and will provide leasable space for industry partners. Occupancy is expected in 2016.

The University of Central Florida is partnering with Osceola County and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council to create the $72 million Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in Kissimmee. Housing the world’s first industry-led smart sensor consortium, the 100,000-sf research and incubation facility will be leased and operated by the University of Central Florida. The construction manager for the project is Skanska USA.
 

Stanford University is planning to construct the $95 million Photon Science Laboratory Building at SLAC National Accelerator Lab in Palo Alto, Calif. The project will provide a world-class collaborative research facility for SLAC and four joint institutes: the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, and the Photon Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering Institute.

Winthrop-University Hospital opened the $110 million Research and Academic Center in February of 2015 in Mineola, N.Y. Designed by Perkins Eastman, the five-story, 95,000-sf facility will support translational research on pediatric and adult diabetes in conjunction with patient care and community education. The center provides classrooms, a clinical trials center, a simulation training suite, a 350-seat auditorium, and core labs for the study of diabetes, obesity, cardiopulmonary disease, and neurology.

Michigan State University is planning to build an $85 million research facility for the College of Human Medicine in Grand Rapids. The 163,000-sf facility will feature opens labs for team-based research and is slated for completion in fall of 2017. SmithGroupJJR is providing architectural and engineering services for the project, and the facility will be built by a joint venture of Rockford Construction and Clark Construction Company.

The four-story, 104,000-sf Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories building at Johns Hopkins University consolidates under one roof undergraduate labs and faculty from the departments of chemistry, biology, biophysics, and psychological and brain sciences, and the undergraduate neuroscience program. The facility connects to Mudd Hall and completes the fourth side of the Mudd/Levi/Biology complex, replacing aging lab space—much of it underground with poor circulation and sightlines and no natural light—spread throughout campus.

The University of Georgia dedicated the $97.7 million Veterinary Medical Center in Athens in February of 2015. Designed by Perkins+Will, the 300,000-sf complex includes an education building and an animal hospital. The project provides the College of Veterinary Medicine with a 160-seat auditorium, an 80-seat active learning classroom, two smaller classrooms, and an enhanced large and small animal teaching hospital. Turner Construction began building the center in spring of 2013.

The University of Pennsylvania opened the $38 million Jordan Medical Education Center in Philadelphia in January of 2015. Designed to accommodate a multidisciplinary, team-based pedagogy, the three-story, 55,000-sf project will provide the Perelman School of Medicine with two flexible 3,000-sf learning studios, eight technology-rich classrooms, a learning commons, a law auditorium and pavilion, and a variety of small group spaces.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) has crafted a decision-making framework based on objective standards to identify and pursue the highest priorities in a massive building boom that has roughly 95 projects valued from $10,000 to $450 million currently under construction. While a large part of that activity stems from the university’s long-range master plan, a significant portion was necessitated by the devastation of Hurricane Ike, which took 1.2 million sf of the medical school’s Galveston campus out of service in 2008. 

The four-story, 80,000-sf Research and Graduate Education Complex on the campus of Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) is a state-of-the-art biomedical research facility for researchers from the colleges of Pharmacy, Medicine, and Graduate Studies. Three floors of laboratories and support spaces house more than 30 scientists and their teams, with space for 156 bench researchers. The building also contains office space for faculty, write-up areas for research staff and students, and small-group teaching and seminar rooms.