Temple’s president wants to add three new buildings to the school’s North Philly campus

Temple University president Jason Wingard has plans to add three new buildings to the college’s North Philadelphia campus, plus an expansion of the school’s athletic facilities.

Some of the projects are still in the early planning stages, but two buildings have been board-approved and have funding in place, Wingard told the Philadelphia Business Journal in a story published this week. One of the approved buildings would house the College of Public Health, while the other would house both the Klein College of Media and Communication and the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts.

Wingard also has tentative plans to expand its Aramark STAR Complex with a tennis facility and administrative offices. “Next on the list,” he told the Business Journal, will be the Institute for the Future of Work, a new center for the school. Both projects are in early planning stages.

When he was named the school’s next president in June 2021, Wingard told The Inquirer that getting students ready to enter the workforce would be a top priority for him.

“Schools that figure out the ways to develop students with those desired competencies in terms of those market needs, those are the ones that are winning,” he said.

The development projects come as Wingard, a former Columbia University dean who stepped into the role as Temple’s president in July, looks to launch the school’s first major fund-raising campaign since 2009. He told the Business Journal that he hasn’t set a fund-raising goal yet.

“We haven’t been in the practice of having financial campaigns, capital campaigns, at Temple University the way most have at other universities where they’re recurring constantly,” he told the Business Journal, continuing: “We’re going to have to be more decisive about what we can prioritize by way of initiative and what we can’t as we’re building up our arsenal of resources.”