Matthew (Moose) Lopez
Social Media Editor
Sunny skies framed the groundbreaking of a new education and health building at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, attended by university and public officials, including A&M System Chancellor John Sharp who marked the April 4 event as “the golden age of Southside San Antonio.”
The press release announcing the groundbreaking said the new public health education building will add 35,000 square footage of space to the campus, and university provost Dr. Mohamed Abdelrahman said the building would be 51,000 square feet.
The future three-story building includes administrative and instructional spaces for the school’s public health program, kinesiology labs, faculty offices and administrative support for the College of Education and Human Development.
“We don’t have a lot of medical resources [on campus],” Gumila said. “We don’t have a lot of these resources our students need for their professional development, so this building is like an incubator for that.”
Student Government Association president Deane Gumila said the new building brings some much needed additions to the campus.
Plans for the building include classrooms of various sizes for campus-wide use, lobby, student study areas and storage areas.
The first two floors will provide support to education while the top floor is for the public and community health space. The top floor will be devoted to the laboratories that have an emphasis on collaboration.
Dr. Emma Savage-Davis, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, raved about the futurebuilding’s ability to provide students with state-of-the-art facilities that not only meet the needs of the education program but help them excel in any field they choose.
“Whether they’re counselors, whether they’re educators, whether they’re school administrators or clinicians,” Savage-Davis said. “Having the resources to know that education is valued, but also providing facilities that are retrofitted for the kind of teaching we need to do for our students.”
$45 million from the state and the A&M board of regents put up another $10 million, said Sharp.
Dr. Debra Feakes, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the impact of this addition to campus will be felt through generations of Southside residents.Feakes emphasized the benefit of more infrastructure placed on campus to the community.
“A&M-San Antonio is catalyzing that growth, that movement towards the Southside,” Feakes said.
The building is set to open its doors in 2026.
A&M-San Antonio president Dr. Salvador Hector Ochoa highlighted how investmenting into the campus represented the commitment the university has to elevating public education.
“We must put our resources behind the work and equip public universities like ours at A&M-San Antonio to remain accessible and affordable for all Texans.”
Sharp credits the city of San Antonio and the cooperation of local officials as a key factor in the development of the campus A&M-San Antonio. The Chancellor added that the university has boundless potential to attract students from all over the state to fuel its growth.
“In my lifetime, I believe [A&M-San Antonio] will become second only to Texas A&M University-College Station.”
