University gets more space

LONGVIEW – LeTourneau University staff and students gathered in Longview on Friday to break ground on their new Christian Polytechnic University Center. According to our news partner KETK, the new 100,000-square-foot center will be a four-story building that will house more than 25 labs and spaces for the university’s engineering, business and computer science programs.

“There’s been a lot of work, actually many years, to get us to this point,” LeTourneau University President Dr. Steven D. Mason said. “The vision for this building at LeTourneau University, as the Christian Polytechnic University, has been in the making for several years to make it a space and a place that would embody everything that we hope for at an institution like ours.”

The new center is all a part of the university’s Build With Purpose campaign, where university donors are funding projects all across their campus.

“To see our donors and friends step up and make this possible — this is not being funded by tuition dollars. This is entirely by our donors and friends who believe in what we’re doing here,” Mason said.

The university said the new center has been designed with the goal of helping them become a national leader in “Christian polytechnic higher education.” The center will include an Entrepreneurship Hub, a Cyber Lab, a Finance Trading Lab and a Mixed Reality Simulation Lab to help the university reach that goal.

“We want to grow in every single way — not only with enrollment, of course, and we’re excited about that — but we also want to grow deeper in what we offer students,” Mason said. “Our students deserve the best of polytechnic education, the best in engineering, in aviation, and also in nursing, business, liberal arts and sciences, counseling, and theology. This space is going to be one of those prime locations on campus.”

Construction of the center is slated to take around 28 months, meaning the university hopes to open the facility in the summer of 2028.