After a three-year-long renovation worth approximately $41 million, UB’s Foster Hall reopened Friday morning on South Campus. It will host the university’s Graduate School of Education, moving the school back into its original home after at least 50 years spent on North Campus’s Baldy Hall.
“The return of the Graduate School of Education to its original home in Foster Hall marks more than a relocation,” UB President Satish Tripathi said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday morning. “It represents a bold step forward in our bigger part of the South Campus at the center of UB’s professional and graduate education.”
Foster Hall is just one out of multiple buildings that underwent extensive renovations over the past decade under the university’s Campus Master Plan: a $1.64 billion investment dedicated to UB's goal of being one of the 25 public research universities in the nation.
The building’s laboratory space — a remnant of the founder’s original intentions to make Foster Hall a home for UB’s chemistry department — has been turned into an open student space that incorporated natural light in its white walls, wooden panels and a central glass staircase.
“The author Mary Shelley once wrote, ‘The beginning is always today,’” Laura Hubbard, UB’s vice president for finance and administration, said. “It’s a fitting thought for reflecting on a building that is historically significant while also finding itself renewed and reinvented for new beginnings."
The building’s renewed purpose was captured in a 53-foot mural — a collaboration between six high school students and Graduate School of Education faculty — of intertwined flowers, sprawling vines and clasped hands.
“The mural ensures that student voice, creativity and community partnership are permanently embedded in the heart of our new home,” Michele Agosto, Buffalo Public Schools arts director, said.
Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
