Faculty and staff prepare for Health, Science & Technology building to open

Lehigh’s new Health, Science and Technology building, which was set to open in fall 2021, is nearing completion after two years of construction. Some faculty and staff members are beginning to move in.

Provost Nathan Urban said there is no official opening date for the HST building at this time. He said everyone working on the building is trying to get a public opening as soon as possible.

Project Manager Joe Klocek said he hopes the building will be complete by the end of the month. 

While the university broke ground on the building in fall 2019, Urban said there were a number of challenges that delayed the HST building’s opening, one of which being the ongoing pandemic. Due to the pandemic, Pennsylvania temporarily shut down all construction for about two months in 2020. 

Klocek said supply chain issues have also been a major inconvenience for the planning, design and construction team.

“The biggest problem became material supply chain issues for everything that was ordered, and we’re still dealing with that,” Klocek said. “We still have material supply chain issues with a lot of the lab equipment.” 

Housing the College of Health, which opened in fall 2020, the HST building will be home to modern laboratories, meeting rooms and interdisciplinary research spaces for faculty, staff and students across multiple colleges, Urban said.

Unlike most buildings at Lehigh, the layout of the HST building is focused on open-concept labs and shared meeting spaces. Klocek said the purpose of this design is to promote collaboration.

“We want it to be a place where people with different areas of expertise and different colleges with different interests really come together and work together to explore some of the most challenging and important research questions and research problems that are out there,” Urban said.

Urban said the research happening in the building will have two main areas of focus: biohealth as well as energy and materials. 

It is intended that biohealth research will be conducted by individuals from the College of Health, as well as those in the bioengineering and biological sciences programs. Energy and materials research will be conducted by individuals studying in areas such as materials science engineering and chemical engineering.

Thomas McAndrew, an assistant professor in the College of Health, recently moved into the HST building. He said he is working on his research to forecast the trajectory of infectious agents through both computational models and models of human judgment. 

“Although my work is primarily in health, as you might imagine, I’m working with people in all the different colleges and in a variety of different departments,” McAndrew said.

To generate learning and academic discoveries, Urban said the HST building will be a welcoming environment for staff, faculty and students from various disciplines to interact together. 

“There’s a lot of big conference spaces and flexible spaces, so I’m sure the College of Health will find creative ways to use those rooms for classes,” Klocek said. 

Though no formal classes will be held in the HST building, McAndrew said he plans on holding research meetings there with his  undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. 

Urban said there is also a community room in the building, where HST faculty and staff members will host public events and lectures for members of the Lehigh and greater Bethlehem communities.

Amenities in the building will include a cafe where faculty, staff and students can grab a drink or a snack while working.

Sara Levy, ‘24, is studying population health in the College of Health. She said she is looking forward to spending time in the HST building, especially the cafe. 

“I think (the cafe) is cool and it’ll be a nice place to study,” Levy said.

McAndrew said that aside from the HST cafe, he is most looking forward to stepping through the doors and seeing his fellow faculty members and students collaborating together.