Yesterday Governor Bobby Jindal participated in a ground breaking for LSU’s new five story Choppin Hall Annex Chemistry and Materials Science Building. The Governor was joined by Chancellor of LSU Dr. Michael Martin and area elected officials.
Governor Jindal said, “Today is a great day for the students, teachers and community of LSU, as well as the entire state. This five-story, more than 85,000 square foot building will provide our flagship university with even more tools for teaching and training our future scientists, our future innovators, but more importantly – students who will go on to provide our state and nation with a brighter future.
“We have worked with the Legislature to appropriate and finance an incredible total of $537 million – over half a billion dollars – in critical higher education infrastructure investments, including construction, renovations, and major repair projects. This total includes our investments toward LSU and the Choppin Hall Annex.”
With an investment of $33.9 million in state funding, the project will provide 140 work areas for faculty, and expand LSU’s chemistry department’s space by 50 percent and the total school’s research space by 63 percent. Investments by the Jindal administration for the Choppin Hall Annex Chemistry Lab Building total $18.65 million: $7.95 million in capital outlay funds and $10.7 million in general fund and surplus dollars.
The bottom floor of the new building will house major instrumentation to support materials science, chemistry, and other science-engineering areas. It will also feature two multipurpose laboratories that will be used for general holding instruments and faculty research. The other two labs will be used for materials research.
The remainder of the floors will house laboratories designed for synthetic chemistry and materials science. They will provide faculty and post-doctoral offices, space for support personnel and instruments rooms. Six large six-person synthetic labs will occupy the center of the building and feature shared student office space in front of each lab. Each floor will also house two open labs on each floor.
Chancellor of LSU Dr. Michael Martin said, “Not only will this help our Flagship Agenda research goal, but it gets LSU 39 percent closer to our goal of increasing laboratories by 50 percent. Increasing the research infrastructure on campus will help recruit and retain great faculty and gives us greater ability to apply and receive research grants.”
To date, the Jindal administration has invested a total of $130.5 million into LSU and the Baton Rouge research community composed of $107.7 million in capital outlay and surplus funding and $22.8 million in future funding. Portions of funding include $69 million toward the new clinical research building center at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, $30 million for the new Business Education Complex, $14.3 million in deferred maintenance funding, $7.2 million for the School of Veterinary Medicine, $3.6 million for the LSU Ag Center’s Animal and Food Science Facilities, $1.8 million for the Homeland Security and Environmental Technology Center and $3 million for the Band Hall.
