COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – On Wednesday, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted to expand the May Business School and a lease in Fort Worth during a public meeting at the Texas Memorial Student Center A&M University.
Construction of the May Business School Expansion, the Business Education Complex project, is scheduled to begin in September and is expected to be substantially completed by October 2024. The project includes a building of four floors and 82,000 square feet and an area called “Collaboration Plaza,” to be located on Olsen Boulevard, northeast of the Wehner Building. The project has a total budget of $84,197,309 to be paid for through various methods, including donations.
Duane Ireland, interim dean of the Mays Business School, said the expansion of the May Business School will allow the college to provide better educational opportunities for students at all levels. The new building will include wired collaboration and collaboration spaces specifically designed to promote interaction among students, Ireland said.
“We’re also going to have a cafe on the first floor,” Ireland said. “It will only have coffee and drinks, but this will give us a chance to meet, collaborate and share ideas. Students will be able to sit down informally and talk about projects.”
Ireland said this is an excellent opportunity for Mays Business School to provide students with the skills they need to survive in tomorrow’s business environment.
“We believe this is a fabulous indication of Texas A&M University’s commitment to educational excellence in this regard at the Mays Business School,” Ireland said. “We believe this demonstrates that our school, our university, is committed to providing all of our students at all levels with superior educational opportunities. In this case, it will be superior educational opportunities both technologically and through face-to-face communication”.
The Fort Worth lease extension will add 10,630 square feet for the University of Texas System’s new offices to be located at Burnett Plaza in downtown Fort Worth. Texas A&M system members such as Texas A&M AgriLife, Texas Division of Emergency Management, Texas A&M Engineering, Mays Business School, Tarleton State University and others will move into these new offices and will be among the first entities to join the Texas A&M University School of Law as part of the expansion.
“This additional expansion will allow the Texas A&M University System to have a presence there in North Texas,” said Kim McCuistion, associate vice chancellor and director of the University System of Texas A&M Forth Worth Campus. “We will be able to bring together additional partner agencies, as well as other researchers and industry partners, all in one complex to ask some of the big questions we face.”
The expansion is part of the university’s vision to create an urban research campus in downtown Fort Worth, which has been dubbed “Aggieland North.”
“The law school will move into the first two phases, which will soon be two buildings here,” McCuistion said. “The first building will be law in addition to other academic programs that will be offered there and the second building will be focused on research and innovation. There will be a total of three buildings, the third building will be built after the current law school is demolished.”
The construction of the Law and Education Building is scheduled for 2023 with the cost covered by the income of the Permanent University Fund. The Research and Innovation Center is expected to be built around the same time.
During the meeting, the Regents also voted to name the Highway 21 entrance to the Texas A&M RELLIS campus Gus Grissom Boulevard after the late astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom.
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