Boston College aims for 10-year, $1.6 billion expansion plan

BOSTON -- Boston College is pursuing a 10-year, $1.6 billion (£á1.09 billion) expansion plan it says will help propel the university into the top tier of colleges in the U.S. and transform it into the world's leading Catholic university.

The plan, to be formally announced Wednesday, includes adding up to 100 new faculty members, building four new academic buildings, a recreation complex, more than 600 new beds of undergraduate students, a fine arts district, and new athletic fields and facilities.

It also calls for creating more than a dozen new centers and institutes within the university. The college wants construction of the new facilities well under way as it reaches its 150th anniversary in 2013.

"We want to be an institution that meets societal needs as best we can," said Boston College's president, the Rev. William P. Leahy. "We are a strong university that wants to become even stronger."

The plan includes the establishment of a new Institute for Liberal Arts to foster greater cooperation between different humanities disciplines and between those in the humanities and those in the sciences.

The plan also calls for the creation and expansion of programs designed to respond to growing societal need. These include the creation of an Institute on Aging in the 21st Century to promote research on issues important to the elderly, and a Center for Catholic Education, which the college hopes will become a national "think tank for exploring the challenges facing Catholic education in the United States."

The university also hopes to build on its Catholic legacy with the creation of a new School of Theology and Ministry, which will bring the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, now located in Cambridge, onto the university's campus in Boston.

The expansion - which has been in the planning stages for the past two years - is being fueled in part by the university's acquisition of about 65 acres (26.3 hectares) of land from the Boston Archdiocese. The sale was part of the archdiocese's long-range effort to recover from financial problems related to the clergy sex abuse scandal that erupted in 2002.