East Carolina University Breaks Ground on New Building
On July 21, East Carolina University’s (ECU) held a groundbreaking ceremony on-site for the new Life Sciences and Biotechnology building. The project, located on the corner of 10th Street and Cotanche Street, is expected to be completed by August 2021.
According to the University’s website, Robert Brown, project manager for the building, said the new four-story building will have an overall gross square footage of 141,500 square feet and will cost $90 million.
“This new science facility will provide state-of-the-art science facilities needed to attract top-quality faculty in applied research, increase student access to modern science education, and facilitate the application, translation, and communication of scientific research and scholarship to broader audiences,” Brown said.
Brown said the new building is a Millennial Campus site in the Warehouse District of Greenville. According to ECU’s website, Millennial Campuses are areas within institutions, especially research universities, where the school gains support from various partners to create new innovative places for ideas and progress.
“This building will create opportunities for partnerships and discovery with our local industry partners, provide for research programs that will be globally competitive and produce higher-skilled graduates that will be able to compete successfully in the global workplace,” Brown said.
According to Ron Mitchelson, ECU’s Provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, “We want to maximize student success and to lead regional transformation. We wanted a building that could address real-world problems in our region while involving our students to create innovative solutions to those problems.”
“You will find biologists, engineers, physicists and chemists in this building once completed by August 2021,” Mitchelson said. “We have over 2,000 biology and engineering majors at undergraduate and graduate levels at ECU. This new building will be humming with teams of faculty and students doing interdisciplinary research and solving difficult problems.”
Source: East Carolina University
