Texas Tech celebrates $83 million El Paso addition

[TexasTowelie]

An artist's rendering shows the $83 million Medical Sciences Building that will be built at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso. (Photo: Special to the Times)

The upcoming construction of an $83 million research lab and classroom building on the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso campus was celebrated Tuesday by community leaders as another milestone in the journey to first get a medical school and now expand it.

"Today is a celebration of a journey, our community's journey to build a better life for our citizens," said Rick Francis, chairman of the Texas Tech University System board of regents and CEO of WestStar Bank, an El Paso banking chain. "We built an entire (El Paso) university and changed the course of one city's destiny.

"Our community, working together, did something that we haven't done in a long time: We overachieved," Francis told about 300 people gathered under an air-conditioned tent on a dirt lot at Alameda Avenue and Concepcion Street in Central El Paso, where a ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony was held for the newest addition to the Texas Tech and Paul L. Foster School of Medicine campus.

Texas Tech has operated a regional health sciences center in El Paso since 1973. The four-year medical school's first class began in summer 2009. A nursing school and graduate school of biomedical sciences have been added in recent years.

Read more: http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/health/2017/05/02/el-paso-texas-tech-university-health-education/101209580/