Texas Woman's University Institute Of Health Sciences At 6700 Fannin St.

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Vaughn Construction to build TWU urban campus

Mary Ann Azevedo

Houston Business Journal

Texas Woman's University has awarded a $27.7 million contract to Houston-based Vaughn Construction to build the university's new urban campus in the Texas Medical Center.

The new campus will more than double the educational institution's Houston enrollment to 3,000 students. Construction is set to begin early next year.

In preparation for the move, TWU participated in a land swap with The Methodist Hospital for the new site.

The deal called for TWU, which has a primary campus in Denton, to build a new local campus on land previously owned by Methodist. In exchange, Methodist will build a patient tower on the soon-to-be abandoned TWU Houston campus as part of its own multimillion-dollar expansion in the medical center.

The new 10-story, 202,000-square-foot TWU campus will include seminar rooms designed for traditional instruction, conferences, video conferencing and distance learning. Classrooms will be located on every academic floor of the building, which also will include several 120-seat lecture halls and a 250-seat auditorium.

TWU established a Houston campus in 1960 by expanding its nursing program to the Texas Medical Center. Today, the campus serves almost 1,200 students majoring in nursing, physical therapy, library science, health care administration, occupational therapy and nutrition.

TWU has the largest nursing program in Texas, with more than 2,200 nursing students, and produces more new nurses than any other program in the state.

A nursing college will serve as the centerpiece of the new TWU Houston campus. TWU recently received a $3 million grant from the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation for the nursing center.