By Nick Todaro
ntodaro@thenewsstar.com

RUSTON — Bulldogs past and present, administrators and faculty and community members gathered Friday to celebrate the opening of Louisiana Tech University's biomedical engineering building.

Construction of the $12 million project took two years.

Louisiana Tech President Dan Reneau said the building's opening gave him a profound sense of calm, but he is looking ahead to the next project. Plans are in the works for a $25 million research park in Ruston.

The biomedical engineering building, connected to the Institute for Micromanufacturing and housed on the southern side of campus, is the most technologically advanced facility on campus, said Stan Napper, dean of the college of engineering and science.

"This building is unique on this campus. It provides special features that enable collaboration across multiple academic disciplines. It is instrumental in our vision for Tech in 2020."

The building features laboratories, classrooms and faculty offices, all in close proximity; "collaboration spaces" for idea exchange between investigators and an economic development incubator, Humana Enterprise Center.

"Spaces for new businesses are found near the faculty and students (who) will develop the technology that (those businesses) will license and commercialize," Napper said. "Thank you to the officers of the state "» who were willing to support this dream."

Reneau's dream started in 1972 with the founding of the university's biomedical engineering building.

"Great leadership involves looking ahead to the future," said Mike McCallister, president and CEO of Humana Inc., benefactor of the business incubator. "Think about where we were in 1972 in medicine and health care. We're so much farther ahead (because) somebody thought biomedical engineering mattered."

Board of Regents member Bob Levy called the building "just what the doctor ordered" for Louisiana.

"We're all familiar with the knowledge economy" and that participation in it is "critical to continued growth," Levy said. "This facility will be a magnet for qualified professionals. Louisiana is taking giant steps right here today."

Jeff Kern, who graduated in biomedical engineering in 1981 after the opening of the first biomedical engineering building in the former Ruston Hospital on U.S. Highway 167, said the administration "did good.

"I couldn't be prouder of these guys. They're doing the right things at the right time."

'Super chair'
As a surprise addition to Friday's opening of Louisiana Tech University's biomedical engineering building, Louisiana Tech President Dan Reneau announced the university's first "super chair."
The $2 million Herman Anson Rhodes Eminent Scholar Chair in Engineering honors Louisiana Tech graduate Herman Rhodes and was made possible with a donation from his widow, Opal Rhodes.

Opal Rhodes, 96, said the idea for the biomedical engineering building gave her "good vibes" and, through numerous conversations with Reneau, she felt it was the best thing for Louisiana Tech.

"I've followed this from the beginning," Rhodes said. "And I felt God was a part of it all the way."

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