Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com • Worcester Business Journal • 2021 Economic Forecast 37 ngrid.com Connect with us on We're investing and innovating for our communities energy future. Nat King Cole "You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss. " Standard Time weekdays 3:00 to 6:00 pm. The Great American Songbook and jazz standards. And great radio is still great radio. Herman Hupfield Nat King Cole "You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss. " Standard Time weekdays 3:00 to 6:00 pm. The Great American Songbook and jazz standards. And great radio is still great radio. Herman Hupfield Top higher education stories in 2020 Central Mass. colleges face an unprecedented semester Originally published Aug. 17. Read the full version at WBJournal.com. Some freshmen at Worcester Poly- technic Institute will spend the fall living at a hotel just off campus. Clark University and Framingham State University have plans in place to isolate students in their dorms while awaiting coronavirus test results. Dean College in Franklin said it would hold classes on campus, before reversing itself amid rising cases na- tionally. College of the Holy Cross then did the same, about three weeks before classes were set to begin on campus. Assumption University is breaking its fall semester into two parts, allow- ing onto campus for the first half only freshmen and seniors on campus for the first term, along with students who live outside the Northeast, including inter- national students. e first day of classes has been moved up to Aug. 17. It'll be a semester quite unlike any- thing Central Massachusetts has seen before, and one requiring colleges to balance safety during a pandemic with a return to somewhat normal operations. So much is up in the air colleges are still not sure exactly what the semester will look like, even as few days remain until classes are supposed to begin. "I'm not putting dates on anything," said James Vander Hooven, the presi- dent of Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner. "If we go through a big effort to communicate a plan to just change it nine days later, the confusion and lack of clarity is going to hurt." UMass Medical School to build $325M building Originally published Oct. 20. Read the full version on WBJournal.com. e UMass Medical School said Tuesday it will construct a $325-mil- lion, nine-story research and education building for a major expansion of its Worcester campus. e building will be built close to Plantation Street between two existing buildings: the Lazare Research Building and the Albert Sherman Center. A park- ing garage now standing on the site will be partially demolished beginning in January, with a steel frame for the new building rising by next fall. e 350,000-square-foot building is due to be complete by the fall of 2023. It will join a four-story, $75-million Veterans Affairs care facility already un- derway on the other end of the campus, due to be complete in mid-2021. e new building announced Tuesday will include space for 77 principal investigators, in addition to animal medicine and a manufacturing facility for clinical trial therapeutics. It is expected to house the Horae Gene erapy Center, the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology, the Program in Molecular Medicine, and the new Program in Human Genetics & Evolutionary Biology. Holy Cross president latest to step down Originally published Sept. 22 Read the full version on WBJournal.com. e College of the Holy Cross on Tuesday announced its president, Rev. Philip Boroughs, would step down from his role at the end of the academic year, ending his nine-year run leading the Jesuit liberal arts college in Worcester. Boroughs' last day will be June 30, 2021. Boroughs, 71, plans to take a one-year sabbatical before taking a new assignment with the Jesuit Order. Boroughs is the latest college pres- ident in Central Mass. to step down or retire. Susan West Engelkemeyer, president of Nichols College in Dudley, announced on Sept. 9 she is retiring at the end of the school year aer leading Nichols for a decade. Clark University President David Angel retired this past June and has been succeed by David Fithian. Charles Monahan, the presi- dent of MCPHS University in Worces- ter and Boston for more than two decades, retired in January. e Cum- mings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tus University in North Graon announced a new leader in April 2019, as Alastair Cribb took over as dean. The proposed new $325-million research building at UMass Medical School W PHOTO/COURTESY OF UMASS MEDICAL SCHOOL

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