Ole Miss gets $20M grant, will build science facility
The University of Mississippi will expand "Science Row" with a new facility seeded by a $20 million grant from the Gertrude C. Ford Foundation.
Announced Tuesday, the grant launches a university-led campaign to raise the full $100 million needed for the new building, which will occupy some 200,000 square feet and sit among a cluster of 10 other science-based facilities on the Oxford campus.
It represents a significant addition to the university's growing stake in the STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Long considered a bastion of liberal arts education, Ole Miss acknowledged a critical shortage of STEM-educated workers and, in 2012, committed itself to producing more graduates from those fields.
An increasing number of its 23,096 students now major in STEM fields, and its engineering school alone has grown 145 percent in the past decade, said university spokesman Danny Blanton.
"Our nation can continue as a global leader by encouraging more students to pursue the sciences, as well as technology, engineering and mathematics," said Chancellor Dan Jones in a statement. "This state-of-the-art facility will undergird our efforts to provide outstanding facilities for teaching and research in the sciences."
The building will house various disciplines and is tentatively scheduled for completion by the fall of 2018. Additional money will come from private donations, state and federal funding and internally generated cash, according to a press release.
"We are profoundly grateful for their generosity," Jones said of the foundation.
It's the latest in a series of gifts the Jackson-based philanthropic organization has bestowed upon Ole Miss, including $20 million for the Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 2002 on the Oxford campus.
"The Ford Foundation board members have been very pleased with the utilization of the private support we have provided the University of Mississippi," said Anthony T. Papa, president of the foundation board, in a statement. "Certainly these experiences led to our decision to award another major gift."
Papa said the grant emerged from a conversation he had with Jones after learning the campuses needed another science building.
It comes amid other major investments along Science Row, including the addition of 96,000 square feet to the Thad Cochran Research Center and an expansion of nearly 36,000 square feet to Coulter Hall.
The Thad Cochran Center houses the National Center for Natural Products Research, Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences and School of Pharmacy. Coulter Hall houses the chemistry program.
"Because of the historic growth of our enrollment, we've identified a need for more classroom space, laboratory space and research space," Blanton said. "This facility will encourage more students to enter those fields."
Contact Emily Le Coz at elecoz@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7249. Follow @emily_lecoz on Twitter.