GRADE 11 of the UST Senior High School and the Institute of Information and Computing Sciences will move to a new building being constructed on España Boulevard next academic year.

Fr. Dexter Austria, O.P., director of the UST Facilities Management Office (FMO), said the building would house an estimated 7,000 Grade 11 students in 2019.

Only the ground floor, second floor and four to five classroom floors will be available by July of next year as the building’s completion is not expected until December of 2019 or early 2020, FMO Assistant Director Albert Surla said.

The Grade 12 students will be housed at the Buenaventura Garcia Paredes, O.P. Building instead of holding their classes in the different college buildings.

UST Rector Fr. Herminio Dagohoy, O.P. said in an interview with the Varsitarian in 2017 that the building, which would cost an estimated P2 billion, would be built in preparation for the normalization of college freshmen enrollment by 2021.

“[W]e are planning that by 2019, Grades 11 and 12 should transfer to that building because we are going back to [the normal] number of enrollees by 2021. They (SHS students) won’t have space here inside the University,” he said.

UST’s plan to construct a private footbridge to connect the new building to the Quadricentennial Pavilion however, was stopped by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

“[It] was the requirement of the DPWH kasi dadaan [‘yong overpass] sa public road. So [kailangan] may stairs siya pababa ng España [that is accessible to the public,” Surla said.

The second floor of the new building will temporarily be a multi-purpose floor until the security measures for both sides of the footbridge are finalized.

The design for the footbridge will still undergo a few revisions and a contractor has yet to be assigned to the project, Austria said.

The building will also host 150 “smart” classrooms for the Senior High School students.

“Smart classrooms ang tawag kasi ‘yung tables nila, they can place them together. [Students] can talk or collaborate as a group but they can also be individualized,” he said.

Architectural design
The 23-storey building will have 10 classroom floors with 15 classrooms each, administration office floors, two parking levels, two library floors, one floor dedicated for both computer and science laboratories, and one whole floor for a cafeteria.

Half of the building’s two topmost floors will be a two-level gymnasium and the other half will be a two-level auditorium.

Upon completion, UST’s new building will surpass De La Salle University’s Brother Andrew Gonzalez Hall as the tallest educational building in the country.

The former will have 23 floors while the latter stands at 21 floors.

The University acquired the lot, where the Isabel Building once stood, from Time Realty in 2015.

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