The University of South Carolina is advancing plans for a new $300 million medical school building, which is expected to be completed by the fall of 2027. The 320,000-square-foot facility will house research and classroom spaces in the BullStreet district.
The new building, touted as the “first phase” of a larger health science campus, intends to combine research and education into one collaborative space. USC's board of trustees approved plans for the medical school during its December meeting.
USC's School of Medicine is focused on neurological research and announced the Rural Brain Health initiative in 2023. The initiative, aimed to improve care across the state, features six rural locations with Columbia as the center of the network.
The new medical school building will continue to research brain health but will also include more interdisciplinary research that ranges from nursing to pharmacy, university spokesperson Jeff Stensland said during the December meeting.
The current medical school is located on the Department of Veterans Affairs campus off of Garners Ferry Road. But the university’s lease of that area is up in 2030, pushing USC to consider other options for a future location.
The BullStreet district site was chosen for the new building because of its proximity to Prisma Health — one of USC's partners — and other medical park buildings that the university independently owns, university architect Derek Gruner said.
Built out of brick and limestone, the new medical school is intended to mimic the architecture of USC’s main campus, Gruner said.The design includes a cafe, large glass spaces and rooftop terraces.
The plans originally included two separate areas but moved to one building to help promote collaboration between education and research, said Heather Mitchell, the president of Boudreaux architectural firm.
The idea of collaboration then became central to the project, Gruner said.
"Literally the buildings did merge, and I think that will be one of the characteristics that really distinguishes the University of South Carolina's School of Medicine is it's close relationships, it's inseparable relationship between the academic experience and research,” Gruner said.
The new building will help provide more access to research opportunities for students, said Chris Marshall, a fourth-year medical student.
"With the new medical school campus, there's gonna be a lot more support from a research perspective," Miller said. "Just with state-of-the-art facilities, you're gonna have a much more enriching learning environment. And it's just gonna attract a lot of more opportunities to the area."
The research areas of the building are designed to be innovative and highly technological. The space is laid out to be modular and allow for research growth, Mitchell said.
“What’s innovative and forward-looking about the building is how the building is being planned to foster the interconnections so that research is not being done off in a dark wing by themselves,” Mitchell said. “It’s really kind of on display.”
First-year USC medical student Abigail Chase said the move will help establish more of a community.
"It's interesting, because we're kind of in our own little world," Chase said. "It's easy to forget that main campus has so many facilities for us to use. So I think being downtown will kind of bring us back into not just our own little tiny student body but back into the student body of South Carolina."
The added space will allow an increase in annual class sizes from 100 to 130 students, Gruner said.
"Collaborative and intensive programming process began to try and define what needed to be accommodated within the building," Gruner said. "The intention was to be able to expand that class size."
Increased classes can help meet the demand for more physicians and healthcare professionals within the state, university spokesperson Collyn Taylor said in an email to The Daily Gamecock.
USC plans to use both campuses once the new medical school becomes operational, Taylor said. But the Department of Veterans Affairs campus will continue in research and use of its Simulation and Interactive Learning Center.
The medical school building will also serve as an anchor for additional health science buildings and help establish a sense of cohesiveness throughout the campus, Gruner said.
Four new buildings are planned around the medical school, but dates are not set on that development. Those buildings will most likely be used for graduate programs and clinical research, Gruner said.
The plans will now move to the Commission on Higher Education, then on to the Joint Bond Review Committee and the State Fiscal Accountability Authority before future plans can proceed. Gruner said the project is fully expected to continue through the next round of approvals.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify that USC will continue working on the Veteran Affairs campus to do research, even after the lease ends.