Ground blessing held for McFarland addition on Friday
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Norma Burgess, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, welcomes supporters to the Ground Blessing held next to the construction site.
Lipscomb students, officials prayed over the construction site for McFarland's new labs
See a Photo Feature of the McFarland Ground Blessing Ceremony
Students, donors, faculty and other supporters gathered Friday, Nov. 7, to bless the ground where new sciences labs will be in place by next year.
The ground blessing ceremony for the $8.5 million addition to the McFarland Science Center was held next to a massive hole that had already been dug to begin construction of the 24,000-square-foot addition that will include six new laboratories for organic chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology and human anatomy and physiology. The addition is expected to be completed in October 2015.
Norma Burgess, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, greeted the crowd, noting that her college includes the largest body of science majors on campus.
“With this new addition, I can only imagine just how far and how high these students will fly,” she said.
Various other Lipscomb officials and students offered prayers of blessings for the site, for the faculty, for the students who will study in the labs and for all those the students will affect as health care and science professionals.
As the home base for all of Lipscomb’s undergraduates majoring in science-related fields, McFarland Science Center has launched the careers of innumerable health science professionals since it was constructed in the 1960s. Since Lipscomb became broadly recognized for the quality of its premedical program in the 1980s, the number of science faculty has doubled and the science enrollment has more than doubled. Premedicine is now the top interest among incoming freshmen.
“Lipscomb’s history of excellence and success in the sciences is very attractive to prospective students. About 45 percent of the incoming freshman class in recent years has majored in the natural or health sciences and we expect that demand to continue,” said Burgess.
“If we are to continue to grow our pre-professional programs, add exciting new graduate programs and accelerate our biomedical research program, expanding and renovating McFarland is essential,” Burgess said.
For full information about the McFarland campaign, contact jeff.fincher [at] lipscomb.edu (Jeff Fincher), director of development for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, at 615.966.6214. To give, visit give.lipscomb.edu.
-- Photos by Kristi Jones, video by Josh Shaw