Demolition began Aug. 17 on the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University Administration building on Brittany Drive in Baton Rouge, which will be the new St. Francis Hall.
FranU received funding from Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center to build a 75,000 square foot, three-story building dedicated to academic and student development functions at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
St. Francis Hall is the first building in the campus master plan and will serve as the front door to make FranU a cohesive and identifiable campus. It will provide curricular and co-curricular services for all students at all program levels.
Driven by the university’s mission, the facility is dedicated to teaching and learning in an interactive and student-centered environment. The building contains smaller, modular, less formal rooms that can support multiple educational activities and group sessions.
Learning outside of the classroom is facilitated by interactive student spaces adjacent to instructional spaces, promoting ongoing synergies between formal and informal learning and enhancing the relationship-based education characteristic of a Franciscan university.
FranU began in 1923 as a school of nursing with the purpose of serving the workforce needs of its affiliated hospital. That school of nursing has grown to become a university that educates and forms service-minded professionals in a broad array of high-demand fields.
FranU began in 1923 as a school of nursing with the purpose of serving the workforce needs of its affiliated hospital.
As FranU addresses Louisiana’s growing demands for healthcare professionals, academic programs, teaching and learning methods, tools and technology are all becoming increasingly complex. The university has, since its inception, been creatively resourceful, controlling operational expenses to allow for competitive tuition pricing. As part of such resourcefulness, FranU has accommodated growth by adapting medical office buildings for educational purposes. Today, the university occupies 12 renovated clinics and office buildings scattered throughout the Baton Rouge Health District.
St. Francis Hall will support FranU’s ongoing expertise in experiential learning with simulation suites that re-create patient-centered clinical environments, including high-fidelity rooms, standardized patients and multi-bed skills labs. Flexible and adaptable classrooms, team rooms and labs for project-based, interdisciplinary and interprofessional learning will help to prepare graduates for healthcare delivery methods that improve outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Also, academic commons areas that encourage interaction and collaboration will provide ongoing opportunities for problem solving and innovation.
The overall budget for the project is $28 million.
With healthcare, technology and teaching strategies are constantly evolving, the physical environment for educating healthcare professionals must be dynamic and sufficiently flexible to support today’s curriculum and delivery modes while also responding to future advancements in healthcare and education, FranU officials said.