TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY
TXST groundbreaking for new STEM building
Another new building will dot the San Marcos skyline as Texas State University hosted a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, Aug. 16 for the construction of the new STEM classroom building.
The 168,000-squarefoot building, which will be located at North Street and W. Woods Street near the TXST Agricultural Greenhouse, is expected to be operational by fall 2026.
“We've seen in the last 15 years an astonishing $1.5 billion in new construction,” Texas State University System Chancellor Brian McCall said. “That doesn't count buildings that we've bought, like the apartment complexes that we bought this year, and we have another 600 million in design development right now. Great things are happening on this campus.”
Above, at the groundbreaking are (from left to right) Barrett Bryant, dean of the College of Science and Engineering and professor of Computer Science at Texas State University; TXST President Kelly Damphousse; Olivia Alexander, TXST student body president; Brian McCall, Texas State University System Chancellor; and Pranesh Aswath, TXST provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. Daily Record photo by Dalton Sweat
A press release from Texas State said that the eight-story, $137 million facility is designed to foster innovation and collaboration in STEM disciplines. The state-ofthe- art facility will house the Departments of Mathematics and Computers Science and will provide teaching space, class labs, departmental offices and research labs for other academic disciplines.
“Planning for this building first began in 2018 as part of the university's master plan, and this site was chosen to align the science and engineering disciplines in the same area of campus anchored by the Bruce and Gloria Ingram Hall, which is home to our Ingram School of Engineering,” TXST President Kelly Damphousse said. “Texas State is thrilled that this new STEM building will, in two short years … bring the math and computer science departments together in one facility to foster innovation and collaboration.”
The building will also provide classroom space for the growing departments. Barrett Bryant, dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Texas State University, said that the Computer Science department has around 2,000 students in it and is growing about 15% each year. He said that the math department teaches the second most students of any department on campus.
“With the growth of the University and also the [College of Science and Engineering], this is going to continue to happen, because in predicting our college, most of our students take multiple math courses. For Calculus 1 alone, we have 50% more students enrolled this fall than we did just two years ago. So again, you can see that tremendous growth [is] happening in the math department.”
The classrooms will be equipped with modern technology to support interactive and engaging learning experiences, and they’ll be designed with flexible layouts to accommodate various teaching styles and groups. The new classroom space will be supplemented by cutting- edge labs designed for teaching and advanced research as well as additional facilities that will support the wide range of STEM disciplines for math and computer science.
“The vision for this building and our expanded degree programs demonstrates our steadfast commitment to advancing STEM education and to prepare Bobcats for successful careers in these important fields,” Damphousse said. “The classrooms in this building will be equipped with the latest tools and technologies to support interactive and engaging learning experiences, with flexible teaching layouts, with cutting edge labs designed for both teaching and advanced research. This new space will elevate our Run to R1 by further supporting our faculty members and students in STEM research.” Additional features of the facility include informational learning spaces, which provide open areas designed to encourage spontaneous collaboration and idea exchange among students and faculty.
“The College of Science and Engineering is really honored to have this building being constructed to serve our computer science and mathematics departments,” Bryant said. “As was mentioned, these two departments are really foundations of a lot of the emerging new areas in science and engineering, just to mention a couple, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.”
Overall, the new STEM classroom building will provide a modern, wellequipped space that enhances the learning experience for students. The state-of-the-art facilities will enable undergraduate and graduate student research, promoting innovation and discovery as well as encouraging collaboration across different STEM disciplines.
Project architects are PGAL and Ayers Saint Gross.
