Jerrod KingeryBig changes are coming to the campus of Florida International University (FIU) thanks to funding from the Florida Legislature.
A check for $168 million approved by the state legislature was delivered to FIU, a portion of which will be used to build a new medical facility. The funding was approved as part of the state budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
$100 million in Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) funding from the legislative appropriation will go toward the construction of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine Academic Health Science and Clinical Facility.
The new building will be on campus and operated in a partnership with Baptist Health as part of an ongoing effort to expand physician training, research and patient care in order to benefit the South Florida community.
“The plan is to create a largely outpatient, broad service clinical venue that will provide leading-edge care to our community and serve as a base for training the next generation of clinicians,” says Juan C. Cendan, dean of Wertheim Medicine. “The generous support from the state allows FIU and Wertheim Medicine to enter that space in a substantial manner with Baptist Health South Florida, a proven clinical partner and leader in this community.”
These funds also include $25 million in recurring “preeminent funding” allocated to FIU following its designation as a Preeminent State Research University earlier this year.
FIU says this funding will be reinvested in efforts including the recruitment and retention of top faculty and students.
The Florida Preeminence program was signed into law in 2013 and is meant to elevate and reward the state’s highest-performing public research universities. The designation is based on student success and research performance metrics such as graduation rates, national rankings, faculty memberships in National Academies, research expenditures and patents awarded.
Government Market News has reached out to FIU for a construction timeline for the new medical facility. We will update this story when they provide us with that information.
Photo courtesy DaveBenRoberts
