UT Campus Construction

By Maddi Dolan

Published May 6, 2021

“At 110 acres, the footprint of the university is not getting any bigger,” said Jack Geller, Dean of the College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education. “As an urban campus, we can only grow upwards, not out.” ​ That’s exactly what the University of Tampa is doing, building up. Recent construction has not only transformed campus in terms of growth, but it has also improved the academic programs offered at UT. ​ In the past six years, the university has completed seven major construction projects. This includes buildings like the Ferman Center for the Arts, the Southard Family Building and the Graduate and Health Studies Building. The university is currently working on four more projects, including the Technology Building, phase two of the Fitness and Recreation Center, the Delaware Avenue Parking Garage and the addition to the Cass Building. ​ “These additions to campus have both improved our programs and have allowed us to create new programs at the university,” said Dean Geller. ​ The Ferman Center for the Arts is the most recent addition to campus. The 90,000-square-foot building opened in the spring of 2021, and it provides a new space for the fine and performing arts. ​ The building provides students and faculty with new art and dance studios, a recital hall, a black box theater, recording studios, music practice rooms, office spaces and more. ​ Before the Ferman Center for the Arts, fine and performing art students were spread throughout campus. With the Ferman building, now students can collaborate all in one place. ​ “We took a whole lot of programs and departments that were previously in their own little isolated areas and brought them all together in one building,” said David Gudelunas, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters. “Now students have a designated spot for the fine and performing arts, where they can collaborate with each other in a state-of-the-art facility.” ​ The dance program is one program in the College of Arts and Letters that has benefited from the Ferman building. ​ “To have the size of the studios that we do now, it’s amazing to move in those spaces,” said Dance Program Director, Susannah Lemarquand. “Having the space and technology in those studios now is really a gift for us.” ​ Prior to the Ferman building the dance program had two spaces, the Edison Building and the Bailey Art Studio. Both spaces were rundown and too small for the dancers. ​ “Edison was falling apart. We had bugs, we had rats in the ceiling, the toilets would back up. It was just getting harder and harder to be in that space,” said Lemarquand. “We also had Bailey, which was incredibly small and it was just not functional for the amount of people that we had in classes.”

Right now there are roughly 30 majors and 20 minors in the dance program, but classes are open for all students at the university. The new Ferman Center for the Arts building will allow for growth in the program, which couldn’t be done in the Edison building or the Bailey Art Studio.

“The Ferman Building has been absolutely amazing. The sprung dance floors, sound system, lighting and studio space is great,” said Emily Curry, a junior dance major at UT, “We have so much extra space to really do things in class that we’ve always wanted to but couldn't in the Edison Building or Bailey.” ​ Curry said that for a long time she felt that the dance program and many other programs in the arts had been forgotten by the university, but the Ferman Building shows that UT is serious about those programs. “I think it’s important that the dancers know that they are being given the same standard of education and facilities that anybody else in the university gets in other programs,” said Lemarquand. ​ Besides the Ferman Center for the Arts, the addition of the Graduate and Health Studies Building to campus in 2018 significantly impacted programs in the College of Natural and Health Sciences. ​

“The GHS building enabled two main things,” said Paul Greenwood, Dean of the College of Natural and Health Sciences. “It enabled the nursing program to grow so that we can accept more students, and it also allowed the development of the Physician's Assistant (PA) program at the university.” ​ The GHS building has six floors. Two floors are dedicated to the PA program, two are dedicated to the nursing program, and the top floor is dedicated to the physics program. ​ “Before the GHS building, physics was in a pretty constrained older splace on the first floor of the Science Wing in Plant Hall,” said Dean Greenwood, “The nursing program was in Walker Hall, a small building which no longer exists, and the PA program didn’t exist at all.” ​ Hope Renner, a 2020 UT nursing graduate, got to experience the nursing program prior to the GHS building, and she said it was not a great experience. ​ ​

“My first lab was in the old nursing building. It was incredibly small with limited supplies and low technology,” said Renner. “The technology and the space in the GHS building sets you up for success as a nursing student and prepares you to deal with real patients.” ​ After graduating in 2020, Renner took a job as a nurse on the Cardiac floor at Tampa General Hospital. In June, she will be moving to the Cardiothoracic ICU floor. ​ Dean Greenwood said that the spaces dedicated to the nursing and PA programs are completely modernized in terms of simulation, which sets students up for success. ​ The nursing space in the GHS Building includes a reception floor, a large patient care canter, ICU simulation rooms, health assessment clinical spactes, classrooms, study rooms and faculty offices. The PA space includes a clinical skills lab, patient simulation labs, assessment rooms, digital anatomy labs, classrooms and study spaces. The Physics space includes classrooms, labs and faculty offices. ​ Dean Greenwood said that in the past few years the nursing program has really grown, from 64 students prior to covid, to now 80 students. ​ “We’re going to try and increase the nursing bachelors degree as much as we can now that we have the GHS building. We’ll be over 100 students I'm sure soon,” said Dean Greenwood. “We’re also increasing the size of the masters program and we have a doctoral program now.” ​ Besides the Graduate and Health Studies building improving programs in the College of Natural and Health Sciences, the new Technology Building, which is currently under construction, will significantly impact programs in the college of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education. ​ The building going up next to GHS does not have an official name yet, but Dean Geller said that most people are using “technology building” because the majority of the kinds of programs and activities that are going to be in the building have that focus. ​ The Technology Building will be the GHS Buildings twin, and they will connect at the top three floors with a bridge. Since the bridge is three stories big, classrooms, offices and a multipurpose room, similar to the 9th floor of Vaughn, will be built inside of it. ​ Because of this new building, the university has been able to develop a brand new program - computer science. The top floor of this new facility will be dedicated to the new computer science program. ​ Another floor in the building will be dedicated to the cyber security program. The program will be moved from its current location in the Daly Innovation and Collaboration Building to allow for growth. ​ “Being able to have cyber security right there with computer science creates a synergy that is really going to be helpful,” said Dean Geller. ​ Along with the computer science floor and the cyber security floor, other floors will be dedicated to the communications program and ITS, everything from the help desk to information security systems. ​ The computer science program will not be the only program developed as a result of the new Technology building. This building opens the door to several other programs, for either growth or development. ​ “We’re currently developing a new bachelors program in data science,” said Dean Geller. “We were not able to create a data science program until we had a computer science program in place, and the new building allowed us to do that.” ​ The university has grown about 18% in the past few years, from roughly 8,000 students in 2015, to about 9,600 in fall of 2020. The campus will continue to grow as the student population increases. ​ “We are going to continue to develop and modernize the resources that we have to offer the best learning opportunities for the students,” said Dean Greenwood.