The building boom is the first on Miami’s main Oxford campus in years for Butler County’s largest university and employer.
Jessica Rivinius, spokeswoman for Miami, shouted Friday over the din of construction of the new $96 million Clinical Health Sciences and Wellness Facility, saying eventually it will be used by most of the school’s more than 16,000 students who live on and around campus.
“We are so excited because very soon … we’ll have this great Clinical Health Sciences and Wellness Facility that will be home to some to some innovative and dynamic programs,” said Rivinius as she stood just outside the construction fencing at the site along South Campus Avenue.
“It’s going to serve so many students and it will be so convenient,” she said.
Michael Crowder, associate provost and dean of the graduate school and professor of chemistry and biochemistry, touted the new facility as a “state-of-the-art facility that will house Miami’s Student Health Center as well as our Speech Pathology and Audiology, graduate Nursing, and graduate Physician Associate programs.”
“Due to open in late spring or early summer 2023, the building was designed to foster close collaboration between faculty, staff, students, and local health care providers,” said Crowder of the 165,000 square-foot building.
“Our faculty are thoughtfully designing programs that take advantage of the physical space and close proximity of their colleagues. And our students are primed and ready to explore and participate in all that will be offered,” he said.
Across campus, steel girders are being hoisted into place on what is shaping into the $58 million McVey Data Science Building on the campus’ Talawanda Road.
The 87,000 square-foot McVey building will be under construction through December 2023.
And a few blocks west of campus renovation work on the $15 million College@Elm Innovation and Workforce Development Center at 20 South Elm St. is being done in partnership with the city of Oxford and is expected to be done and opened for operations in January 2023.
The College@Elm will house office space, an entrepreneurship center, startups, a workforce and small business development resource center, a design and testing area and space for manufacturing operations in a former Miami food services building vacant for 19 years.
The importance of each new facility to the Miami goes beyond adding to the campus’ storied, red-brick structures, said Rivinius, who said each project when done will feature extensive inter-disciplinary learning programs for students and professors.
“Our projects also focus on creating trans-disciplinary spaces supporting programming across many different academic departments involving undergraduate students to get hands-on, experiential learning,” she said.
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