Shovels hit the dirt in Laredo this week as the University of Texas System broke ground on a $60 million expansion of the UT Education and Research Center, a project officials say is meant to catch the campus up to years of enrollment growth that has already outpaced its current footprint. UT System Chancellor John Zerwas, M.D., joined state and local leaders at the ceremony, according to the seed facts behind this report.
The expansion, funded through Permanent University Fund bond proceeds per UT System capital planning documents, was added to the system's capital improvement program when the Board of Regents approved it with a total project cost of $60 million. The Virtual Builders Exchange reports the new structure will be a three-story, 56,000-square-foot multidisciplinary building, while UT System's own 2025 facilities planning agenda describes the proposed Laredo Multipurpose Building as a three-level structure totaling 57,469 gross square feet, including 20,389 square feet of shell space — a discrepancy the available records do not resolve.
Whatever the final tally, the building is designed to add classrooms, teaching laboratories and research space, according to UT System's news center. Per the Virtual Builders Exchange account, the first and second floors will house classrooms, teaching labs and research space, while the third floor will remain shell space reserved for future programs. Joeris General Contractors and Alta Architects are both involved in the project, the outlet reports.
A Campus Built for Growth It Already Outgrew
Laredo Center Executive Director Adriana Nunemaker said the groundbreaking marks a defining moment for the center and the region, and said the project expands opportunity as well as the campus itself, according to the Virtual Builders Exchange report. That framing lines up with the numbers in UT System's own facilities planning documents, which project student enrollment at the Laredo center climbing from 142 to 346 by 2029, with graduates projected to rise from 64 to 128 over the same stretch.
Chancellor Zerwas said the project renews the UT System's commitment to the community, per the Virtual Builders Exchange account, and the Board of Regents has described itself as committed to expanding educational opportunity in the nation's largest international port while growing the local health care workforce. The Laredo center is described in that same account as the only place in Texas where students can earn degrees and certificates from four UT System institutions.
A Growing Health Care Pipeline
The center's academic lineup has been expanding for years ahead of this groundbreaking. UT Rio Grande Valley made its Master of Education in Counseling and its bachelor's degree in Medical Laboratory Science available through the Laredo center, according to UTRGV, which said the counseling program addresses the community's need for mental health professionals in South Texas. UTRGV also pointed to a nationwide shortage of medical laboratory scientists, noting Laredo had not received relief to fill lab positions locally.
UT Health San Antonio has also added to the mix, launching Laredo's first Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene degree program at the center. According to UT Health San Antonio, that launch represents the ninth degree program offered at the UT Center at Laredo, with enrollment in the two-year dental hygiene track expected to reach a total of 16 students. The Laredo center overall includes participation from UT San Antonio, UT Health San Antonio, UTHealth Houston and UT Rio Grande Valley, per the same source.
Graduates Already Entering the Workforce
The center has already produced its first cohorts of graduates in several fields. According to the Virtual Builders Exchange report, the Laredo center graduated its first cohorts in social work, biomedical informatics and physician assistant studies in 2023, with those graduates described as helping meet health care needs in Laredo and across South Texas.
That growth traces back further than this month's groundbreaking. The same report notes UT Health San Antonio began offering health professional degrees including nutrition and occupational therapy in 1993, and that legislation enacted in 2021 enabled the UT System to create an expanded educational and health care education resource for the region.
How Laredo's Project Stacks Up
UT System's broader facilities planning data offers some cost context for the Laredo build: the 2025 planning agenda lists median building-cost benchmarks of $646 per gross square foot for structures with roughly 35 percent shell space, and $854 per gross square foot for total estimated finish-out. Elsewhere in the UT System, UT Health San Antonio has pursued an even larger project — a five-story, 95,500-square-foot laboratory building called Science One, expected to cost $100 million, according to UT Health San Antonio. That building is intended to house laboratory space dedicated to researching cancer, diabetes, aging and other diseases affecting the community, with construction planned to begin September 30 and completion projected for August 2026.
Back in Laredo, the newest expansion is pitched less as a standalone showpiece and more as infrastructure catching up to demand. With enrollment and program growth already outpacing the center's current footprint, the new multidisciplinary building is meant to give the campus room for programs that, by the system's own projections, are expected to more than double in size within the next few years.
