FLORENCE , S.C. — When FMU students returned to campus en masse Friday they found that portions of the campus were a work in progress — and that was a good thing.
The two new buildings — a business and education building and a workshop for engineering students — were finished and ready to welcome students into new classrooms. A construction crew Wednesday works on a section of sidewalk on the campus of Francis Marion University in Florence. The journey to the new buildings, though, was still undergoing the finishing touches as were the new entrance signage to the campus off Francis Marion Road.
Those projects are in addition to the renovations of the campus student center last winter and future construction plans for the campus, said President Fred Carter. “If you stand in front of the business and education school and look straight through the windows you can see the nursing school,” Carter said of the two buildings that complement each other in design and placement. “Architects and builders did a fine job not only with the design of the building for the layout as well.
” The new building offers education offices and class space on one side and business offices and class space on the other, a centrally placed auditorium and a large lobby with an equally large water feature. The lobby opens to both the front and back of the building. A construction crew Wednesday stands by as another crew member, not pictured, works to clean out the fountain ahead of students a.