New school year at Ukrainian Catholic University is cause for celebration (09/10/06)

New school year at Ukrainian Catholic University is cause for celebration

by Andrew Nynka
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - For Father Borys Gudziak and the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, the beginning of a new school year this month is cause for celebration.

When the school's roughly 450 students return to class in the heart of Lviv - a city that this year celebrates its 750th anniversary - they will return to a sprawling, 50,000-square-foot academic building.

With its completion later this year, the four-story building will be the home of the school's department of theology and philosophy. Set near a small lake in the Sykhiv section of southern Lviv, the new building will include a 3,000-square-foot library, two large lecture halls and the amenities needed to run a modern university.

"It is one of the few new academic buildings in Ukraine," said Jeffrey Wills, a professor of classical philology at the university. "It is definitely a pioneering academic building in Ukraine."

The building will include classrooms and offices for the university's theology and philosophy students and faculty. It will have a central atrium, cafeteria and chapel, and will be equipped with various information technology resources.

"We see that it has the potential also as a conference center for local businesses," Prof. Wills said. "It's one of the ways we will make inroads to the local community in terms of a relationship."

Construction began on the new building in 2003 and is slated for completion toward the end of fall, though several classes will be held in the new building this semester. The university will hold a grand opening to unveil the facility on September 17.

Completion of the new building will mark the second phase of a large-scale expansion of the university's physical infrastructure. The remaining phase, scheduled to begin next year, will be the development of the Ukrainian Catholic University's main campus on an eight-acre site known as Stryiskyi Park.

With time, the size of the university's student body and academic offerings also will expand, said Father Gudziak, Ph.D. the rector of the university. But school officials say they will not expand until they can assure that, with physical growth, academic quality will not be damaged.

The unveiling of the new building comes several months after Ukraine's State Accreditation Commission decided in March to grant recognition to the university's theological department and to all Ukrainian theological degrees - a move for which the school has fought since its modern inception in 1994.

Meanwhile, university officials say they are preparing for the grand opening of the theology and philosophy building and plan to host Church hierarchs, as well as other guests for the unveiling ceremony at the new building on September 17.

"We are excited about this event," said Father Gudziak. "We hope to share with people our joy in this project as it comes to completion."

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