New School of Medicine building approved by Regents

Jacqueline Peraza | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Thursday morning, the University of Texas System Board of Regents approved funding for a new School of Medicine facility to be built on the Brownsville campus.

David J. Beck, chairman of the Facilities Planning and Construction Committee, presented the items during the board meeting, which was held via Zoom and broadcast on the UT System website.

“Chairman [Kevin P. Eltife], the Facilities Planning and Construction Committee recommends approval of these action items,” Beck said during the session.

All regents voted in favor of the item, and the motion carried.

“The UTRGV School of Medicine has experienced rapid growth across the clinical, academic, and research missions,” the agenda item states. “The Department of Human Genetics, established in 2017, has faculty on both the Edinburg and Brownsville campuses. The offices for the faculty based in Brownsville are in a modular building that was placed on the campus in 2015. New offices that are proximate to the laboratories and an expansion of laboratory space are urgently needed to facilitate the conduct of research supported by multiple National Institutes of Health grants.”

The new facility will be located near the resaca on the north side of the Brownsville campus and “will house faculty and administrative offices, a state-of-the-art vivarium, a laboratory, an MRI suite with exam rooms, offices, and associated labs.”

A vivarium is “a place, such as a laboratory, where live animals or plants are kept under conditions simulating their natural environment, as for research,” according to dictionary.com.

Support for the construction of the MRI suite located inside the new building will come from a $6 million grant awarded to the school by the Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation.

Beck congratulated UTRGV President Guy Bailey for the grant during Wednesday’s committee meeting.

“Congratulations on getting that grant from the foundation,” he said. “That is a tremendous boost for what you’re trying to do there.”

The total cost of the building is an estimated $15,776,663. Other funding for the project includes $8,920,000 in Permanent University Fund (PUF) Bond Proceeds and $856,663 in Unexpended Plant Funds.

The next step for the new School of Medicine addition will be the design development approval, which will be reviewed by the Facilities Planning and Construction Committee first and then the board of regents in May.

Karen Adler, UT System director of Media Relations, wrote in an email to The Rider that the “item is expected to be on the May agenda, but we won’t be able to confirm that until it’s closer to the meeting date.”