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Metropolitan State University Selects BWBR to Design New Science Education Center

Looking to create a new facility to meet the growing demand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates as well as serve a growing nursing and health science student population, Metropolitan State University selected design solutions firm BWBR to help create a new 59,000-square-foot science education center.

The new facility will extend Metro State’s existing Saint Paul-campus to the south of its main campus in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood. It will feature laboratories, lecture and demonstration classrooms, seminar rooms, offices, and support space. Original plans are to link the new science center to Founder’s Hall with a skyway.

Coupled with Metro State’s New Main overlooking downtown Saint Paul, the two academic buildings will create a new campus gateway for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities’ only campus in the metropolitan region. The facility will sit near the corner of 6th Street East and Mounds Boulevard.

The new science education center will enable Metro State to support the state’s priority to increase the number of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Currently offering science degrees in biology and life sciences teaching along with two minors in chemistry and physics, the new facility will support five additional degrees: earth and space teaching; earth science; chemistry teaching; chemistry; and environmental studies.

Construction is estimated to cost $25.5 million, with a targeted opening date in the summer of 2014.

Metro State, “Where Life and Learning Meet,” currently serves 10,000 full- and part-time students in 60 majors, 10 graduate programs, and a doctorate. Focused on serving students in the 13-county metropolitan region, it emphasizes providing under-served groups and working adults with a high-quality liberal arts, professional, and graduate education. Projections estimate Metro State will double its student population by 2020.

For BWBR, Metro State’s new science building marks the fifth academic science and engineering facility in the region it has worked on in the past few years. They include the new nuclear magnetic resonance laboratory and renovation of Akerman Hall at the University of Minnesota; the expansion and renovation of Jarvis Hall at University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, Wis.; and renovation of Peterson Hall at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. BWBR also designed Beck Academic Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College, which opened in September.