UF’s IFAS seeks new building to expand program

UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is fighting for a new building for plant science students and faculty.

The new building would cost an estimated $15.8 million and would be added to the west side of campus near Fifield Hall, said Jeanna Mastrodicasa, IFAS’ associate vice president for operations. The current buildings, Fifield Hall and the microbiology building, lack the space needed to accept more students.

“We believe we are losing about 3,200 credit hours of students that would like to take classes that we don’t have the facilities for,” she said.

The facilities have also caused UF to lose faculty to other research universities, Mastrodicasa said. The proposed project would create a 25,125-square-foot building and renovate an additional 8,600 square feet in the Microbiology and Cell Science building.

“The conditions of some of our facilities are pretty poor,” she said. “We don’t have enough money to do a lot of maintenance, and what we find is a lot of our faculty who choose to leave us are lured away by nicer facilities than we have.”

The new building would add classroom and teaching-lab space, she said. It would move teaching labs out of the microbiology building and convert those labs to research labs.

“I think, honestly, it would really benefit our students the best because they would have better facilities for classes and teaching labs,” Mastrodicasa said. “That, to me, is the biggest thing. We have a really tough time with quality classrooms and all that.”

Funding for the project would come through the Public Education Capital Outlay process, in which the state provides money for some educational projects. But the new IFAS academic building is currently sixth on the list of projects to be taken on, Mastrodicasa said.

“We were higher on the list last year, but we got moved down,” she said. “We had hoped it would be maybe next year we would start.”

The earliest the building could be started is 2018, she said, but nothing will begin without UF receiving the necessary $15.8 million.

Brooke McMillion, a UF plant science senior, said she thinks a new facility with new technology and room for research would be beneficial to her and future plant-science students.

“I do understand if they want to do new buildings and have that for more research back there,” the 22-year-old said.