04 September 2013 Charity. Education. UCU

New Catholic University Campus Opened in Lviv

The inauguration of innovative Catholic University campus marked the completion of the second phase of the most ambitious university construction project across the whole of Eastern Europe. The opening of the new campus in Lviv was confined to the 50th anniversary of the institution. In the past year, UCU College named in honor of Yosyf Slipyj was opened.

The new campus will be attended by about three hundred students and historians, attendants of the Institute of Leadership and Management programs, Lviv Business School and the School of Bioethics.

The design was authored by renowned US architects whose works portfolio proudly boasts over 20 designs of the world’s leading universities including Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

Solar water heating is one of the main innovations used in the construction. According to the calculations, hot water should be sufficient not only to the academic campus, but also to the Collegium what will reduce the cost of its operation.

Miroslav Senyk, UCU Vice-rector on the administration and development, said that the huge dining hall with 250 seats had become one of the major features of the new building. This hall can also be used as a conference room, in this case the number of seats will increase to 350.

“On the ground floor there is a beautiful large dining hall, there are no premises of such kind in Lviv. Its ceiling height is nine meters. For the ceiling construction we used a unique caisson technique. On the roof of the dining hall at the third floor will be a terrace with a garden”, – said Miroslav Senyk.

The campus construction had been underway since the fall of 2010 while the official Capital Campaign for the new campus and the development of the university started in the fall of 2011.

The funds have been provided by thousands of private donors. One of the biggest donors that finance the construction of the campus is a businessman, President of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine Dmitry Firtash. Soon it is planning to build an online library, and the Church of St. Sophia.

NOTE

The Ukrainian Catholic University is one Ukraine’s leading non-governmental higher educational establishments open for secular students irrespective of their religion. In parallel with access to quality humanitarian education, students acquire leadership skills, abilities to meet social challenges and personal development stimuli.

The notion of a catholic university today is identified with high quality of academic learning. The students’ comprehensive development is nourished by the intellectual and social environment: the University boasts a modern library and a computer center. Students’ research efforts are guided by seven subdepartments and rely on support of eight R&D institutions.

UCU is the only Catholic university in the post-Soviet area while globally there are over 1350 Catholic colleges and universities operating 67 countries. These higher education institutions offer curricula that go beyond the narrow confessional component. The first universities in Europe such as the Sorbonne in Paris, Charles in Prague, Jagiellonian in Krakow emerged in the environment of the Catholic Church.

Quite a few eminent personalities graduated from Catholic educational establishments during the history of their existence: Ukraine’s Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, inventor of the theory of relativity Albert Einstein, ex-president of France Nicolas Sarkozy, ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the 42nd President of the US Bill Clinton and others.