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University administrators presented their vision for the new Research Campus Initiative in a Nov. 30 presentation for faculty and staff, which drew a standing-room-only crowd to the Russell House auditorium.
The hour-long preview and question-and-answer session by President Sorensen and Harris Pastides, vice president for research and health sciences, preceded a similar orientation for community leaders later that evening.
The two outlined plans for the campus’ expansion to accommodate new research initiatives and elaborated on faculty recruitment programs that will bring about 600 new professors to USC during the next six years. Throughout their presentations, Sorensen and Pastides stressed the importance of faculty input in the research initiative.
“We need to work at this collectively and collaboratively,” Sorensen said. “We’re excited about the prospect before us, and it will only work if the faculty gets behind it. If the faculty are enthusiastic and dedicated to it, it will happen.”
Sorensen’s vision for the research campus is of “an intellectual ecosystem intertwined with the city, consisting of research labs, office space, mixed-use retail facilities, residential housing, and cultural amenities that become a center for innovation and job creation.” That vision will begin to take shape at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 15 with a groundbreaking for two new buildings in the block bounded by Assembly, South Main, and Blossom streets. The new buildings will house offices, dry labs, and high tech labs, Pastides said.
In early 2005, the University will announce progress on a nearby bio-medical research building in a different part of the research campus.
“It’s my hope and truly my expectation that there won’t be any period in the next 10 or 20 years where you don’t see rapid progress, and I mean construction taking place in the area between the Horseshoe and the Congaree River,” Pastides said.
The Research Campus Initiative includes a strategy Pastides described as the three F’s: more focus on maintaining the high quality of the faculty while building facilities the University needs.
USC’s Faculty Excellence Initiative will recruit about 150 new tenure-track faculty members, and the Centenary Plan will bring in 100 new research faculty. Another 350 faculty members are retiring and must be replaced during the next several years. Sorensen added that the University soon would announce a program to increase the number of faculty in the arts and humanities.
The new research campus will include office and dry lab structures, wet lab and bench-type lab buildings, and engineering-oriented laboratories. The research buildings could allow private companies to conduct research and development in the same buildings in a mission-appropriate basis with USC faculty and students.
Craig Davis Properties of Cary, N.C., which helped develop N.C. State’s Centennial Campus, is working with USC to plan its research campus and attract private investment capital needed for construction.
The buildings will be financed under an arrangement in which USC will lease space from a developer for a set period of time after which the property would revert to the University. USC anticipates the availability of a portion of $220 million for construction of research facilities approved by the Legislature under the Life Sciences Act.
Faculty and staff members are encouraged to submit questions about the research campus by sending e-mails to researchcampusideas@cnsg.com and to visit a Web site at sc.edu/research/.
Marshall Swanson can be reached at 7-0138 or mswanson@gwm.sc.edu.
12/04
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