West Chester fully opens new academic and dining hall building, the biggest construction project in the state system

West Chester University’s nursing program used to be seven miles from campus in an office building.

There simply wasn’t room at the university, said president Christopher Fiorentino.

“I promise we will get you back to campus into a beautiful space,” Fiorentino recalled telling his nursing faculty.

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With the official opening of the university’s newest building on campus this month, he has kept that promise. Called the Sciences & Engineering Center and The Commons, it’s a combination dining hall and academic building, including home to the nursing school.

And at 175,000 square feet plus an adjacent 164,000-square-foot parking garage, it is the largest building project on West Chester’s campus and in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education’s history, state system officials confirmed.

It took more time to build than expected because of the pandemic, and cost more than the originally projected $130 million price tag, but it will get its official ribbon-cutting next week.

It’s not surprising that West Chester, with about 17,300 students — the largest in the state system even after six of its universities were merged into two new entities — is home to the largest building project. Fiorentino said the campus had needed the new building space for some time.

The L-shaped structure includes classroom, auditorium, and lecture spaces, as well as room for student activities. There’s a sizable electronic screen or “video wall” in the lobby and “learning stairs” that provide seating and leisure space for students. It is housing West Chester’s new biomedical engineering program, as well as health sciences, math, physics, and other sciences.

Educationally, its design has taken on a new look.

“This is the first academic building that we have put up that really has had a primary focus on learning and not just teaching,” Fiorentino said.

It offers collaborative spaces, including alcoves with seating and walls that double as whiteboards where students and faculty can brainstorm or just write encouraging notes. Classrooms feature pods of desks with flat-screen TV monitors where students can work in groups. There’s also an “immersive learning center” set up like a hospital wing where nursing students can work on high-tech mannequins.

And in a new “food sensory lab,” a scholar from Iran is working with two faculty members on food sensitivity concerns for people who have cystic fibrosis.

Students studying nutrition are growing food for the university pantry on a rooftop garden.

“It is unlike any other building we have,” said Lorraine “Laurie” Bernotsky, provost. “It has just given multiple departments a whole different ability to learn.”

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The building partially opened for student classes last fall, which was a year later than planned, but the dining hall and some other areas are open for the first time this semester, Fiorentino said.

Construction started in 2018 and was due to be completed in 2020. West Chester is paying for the building with a mix of university savings, philanthropy dollars, and borrowing.

The university got an influx of new state funding this year, thanks to a bigger appropriation from the state and a new state system funding formula that recognizes the size of West Chester’s student body. The university is receiving an additional $19 million, on top of its previous base allocation of $62 million, Bernotsky said.

“That was a significant catch-up amount for us,” Fiorentino said.

In recent years, the system had been funneling more funding to struggling schools with declining enrollments. But this year, six of its universities — Bloomsburg, Mansfield, and Lock Haven and Edinboro, Clarion, and California — were merged into two new schools.

West Chester welcomed its largest freshman class in its history this fall, 3,025 students, up from 2,628 last fall. Overall enrollment — as at many colleges — is projected to be down a few hundred students this year.