As part of the Path to Prominence initiative, Lehigh is working on the expansion of the College of Business and the building of the new College of Health.
University Architect Brent Stringfellow oversees the construction and progress of all the current ongoing projects. His main focus right now is the College of Health.
Stringfellow said the new Health, Science and Technology building, which broke ground last summer, is anticipated to be complete for the fall 2021 semester.
“What you are seeing now is we have completed the excavation,” he said. “When you get back in the fall, you will see a steel frame.”
Construction on the expansion of the College of Business is anticipated to begin this summer and be finished by late 2021 or early 2022. The new building will be located on Webster Street and will contain classrooms, facilities for graduate students and other new spaces that Rauch currently does not have.
Georgette Chapman Phillips, the dean of the College of Business, said she is excited about the expansion.
“When we first started thinking about this project, the idea behind it was that we have grown out of this building (Rauch). And it’s an attractive story,” Phillips said. “We don’t have enough classrooms, we don’t have enough offices, we don’t have enough anything. But the deeper we got into the process, the more important pedagogical innovations became.”
Phillips said the building will have a new financial services lab, an information systems lab, a behavioral lab, a writing center and a TV studio. She said the building will be an incubator for businesses and will include a circular classroom meant for discussion-centered courses.
Phillips said the two key drivers behind this construction and expansion are technology and flexibility.
“(The purpose) is to position ourselves to teach the way that students will be learning in the coming years,” she said. “And at the same time, having the flexibility when pedagogical needs change, we can easily retrofit everything.
Some Lehigh students share similar enthusiasm regarding the construction.
Remi Matsil, ‘22, is majoring in biology on a pre-med track and is excited for future opportunities with the construction of the new building.
“I’m excited for that building (the College of Health) to open because I feel like there will be more choices for…the pre-med track or anyone interested in health medicine in general,” Matsil said.
Phillips is excited to see how these new buildings will play a role in the evolving technological world and how professors will play a part in this change.
She said these new buildings will help integrate “technology as a central part of the educational experience, not just an add-on.”
Stringfellow said he is working with the operations and maintenance departments on repairs and preventative maintenance and plans to start work on other Path to Prominence projects over the summer, like the new dorms set to open in August.
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