Stories
New home of the IU School of Medicine-Lafayette is under construction
Jan. 10, 2013
Construction crews have broken ground and girders have begun to rise at the site of the new home of the IU School of Medicine-Lafayette.
Lyles-Porter Hall is set to open in 2014.
Lyles-Porter Hall, the first building in the Life and Health Sciences Park on the Purdue University campus, is officially under construction. The building, which will have about 61,000 assignable square feet, is the future site of the IU School of Medicine-Lafayette, established in collaboration with Purdue University in 1971.
Each year, 32 first- and second-year IU medical students are placed at the IUSM-Lafayette regional medical education center on the Purdue campus. After the new facility opens, IUSM-Lafayette will expand to 48 first- and second-year students, as well as third- and fourth-year students, who will perform clinical rotations in the Greater Lafayette region.
During a celebration of the new building last spring, D. Craig Brater, M.D., dean of the IU School of Medicine and vice president for university clinical affairs at IU, noted that the ability to train physicians for all four years outside the main campus in Indianapolis will help reduce physician shortages in rural areas across the state.
Lyles-Porter Hall is a $54 million project.
“IU medical students who are educated at one of the eight centers we have around the state are 40 percent more likely to choose primary care medicine and practice in rural areas or smaller cities and towns in Indiana,” he said.
Lyles-Porter Hall is named in honor of a $10 million 2009 gift from Marybeth Lyles-Porter Higuera of Visalia, Calif., a former speech pathologist who earned her bachelor’s degree in speech-language pathology at Purdue in 1959.
Additional facilities in the space will include the Purdue Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and other health-related clinical, educational and research spaces. The total cost for the building and attached parking structure is $54 million.
The building is expected to open in 2014.
