Gannon University is currently renovating space for classrooms in the Minto Communities sales building on 33rd Street SW and S.R. 674.
After a nationwide search for a new campus, Gannon University has settled on Ruskin.
The liberal arts school will start this month renovating 17,000 square feet for classrooms in the Minto Communities sales building, 105 Commercial Center Drive next to Bob Evans off College Avenue. Phase one of the building’s renovation is expected to be completed by May.
Once the building is renovated, Gannon plans to offer an occupational therapy doctorate program in the building, which the school also has an option to buy. The first class of 30 students will start classes in June, said university President Dr. Keith Taylor.
A new campus is also planned for a three-acre plot next to the Minto building that was purchased for $1.45 million by the university. The school plans to add more graduate-level programs in the health sciences as more classrooms become available. The school plans to use the Minto building for at least five years before deciding on a new building.
“We spent almost two years doing the market research,” Taylor said. “If you look at the demographics of the Northeast, the college-age population is going down and will continue to stagnate for the foreseeable future.”
A four-year Catholic university founded in 1925 and based in Erie, Pa., Gannon offers “a liberal arts education integrated with professional skills and faith-based learning,” according to the school’s website. Gannon offers associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees, certificates and doctoral degrees. The school has 4,400 students attending classes at its Erie campus. The Ruskin campus will be significantly smaller, still under 300 by 2019, according to school officials.
Emphasizing that the school educates its students with the needs of the community in mind and a social conscience, Taylor said Ruskin was a natural fit for Gannon.
“We have always focused on not only educating students but educating socially responsible, world citizens,” Taylor said. “We put our students out in the community and work on community needs and address major community challenges.
“When we started looking for a new location, we were looking for an area that not only had a growing college-age population — and that can be anywhere from 20 to 50 — but also [a growing residential population] and Hillsborough County is the fastest-growing county in Florida. We also wanted to put students and programs in a place that needs those services.”
Looking at the market for the health-professional programs Gannon plans to offer in Ruskin, Taylor said, and the relative dearth of those types of educational opportunities in the South County area, the school’s administrators knew South County was an ideal location for the college.
“The relative density of academic programs [in health-professional programs] around the Ruskin, Tampa and Sarasota region is dramatically less than it is in our region,” Taylor said. “We looked at other states and other parts of the country, but Ruskin was the one that really rose to the top.”
Opening with a doctoral program in occupational therapy this year, Gannon plans to offer a doctoral program in physical therapy (in 2016 or ’17) and a master’s program in physician assistant studies (in 2018 or ’19). Once all three programs are up and running in the Minto building by 2019, the campus will serve 285 students, Taylor said.
Breaking ground on a new campus on land adjacent to the Minto building will be dictated by demand, Taylor said.
“We have a five-year plan that is very structured and what happens after that,” he said, “will depend on how the first five years go and how rapidly things grow. We have enough room in the existing facility [the Minto building] to manage the occupational therapy, physical therapy and physician assistant studies programs. As those programs grow and we add other programs, then we will need to decide what size and type of building we need.”
Does the Ruskin campus need student housing? Should the campus have recreation and students centers or is it just a building with more classrooms? Those are the types of questions the college will be considering in five years, Taylor said.
While nothing is written in stone, the college does expect to see robust enrollment at its Ruskin campus and expects to offer more courses in South County — all of which will likely require a new building.
Taylor emphasized that the school is already building relationships with health-care organizations in South County, including the recently opened St. Joseph’s Hospital South in Riverview and several-assisted living facilities in the area.
“Gannon’s approach as a Catholic university is to be part of the community,” Taylor said, “so we have already been working with the elected officials, the health-care industry and the local nonprofits to look at how we will get our students out into the community doing service and making a difference.”
