LSU College of Engineering opens Patrick F. Taylor Hall.
Five years to the day after Phyllis M. Taylor announced she was making a $15 million gift to honor the legacy of her late husband, Patrick F. Taylor, and help kickstart the Breaking New Ground campaign to renovate and expand the building that bears his name, the LSU College of Engineering celebrates the grand opening of the new Patrick F. Taylor Hall with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, followed by building tours and engineering student demonstrations. The facility now measures more than 400,000 square feet and is reportedly the largest academic building in Louisiana and one of the largest freestanding engineering academic buildings in the United States.
The facility was designed by the architectural firms Perkins+Will and Coleman Partners and was constructed by The Lemoine Company. It includes a 110,000-square-foot chemical engineering building addition; state-of-the-art labs and gathering spaces like the driving simulation lab and Commons area; the William Brookshire Student Services Suite; the 250-seat RoyOMartin Auditorium; and the MMR Building Information Modeling (BIM) Lab, where students utilize virtual reality to analyze construction projects, make site assessments, etc.
As part of the Breaking New Ground campaign, $114 million was raised – $57 million from private contributions and a matching $57 million from the state. It is reportedly one of the largest public-private partnerships in Louisiana and the most successful fundraising effort by LSU to date.
In 2007, LSU formally named the Center for Engineering and Business Administration (CEBA) building in honor of Taylor, a 1959 petroleum engineering alumnus. He believed that everyone deserved the opportunity to earn a college degree, regardless of his or her economic means. Consequently, he was responsible for the creation of the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, better known as TOPS.
For more information, visit: www.lsu.edu
