Stetson's Brown Hall for Health & Innovation opens possibilities for DeLand university

DELAND — Kaira Thevenin, a Stetson University junior, says she spends more time in Sage Hall, the 1967 science building, than her home.

The Apopka health sciences major and her fellow students will have a brand-new building, the Brown Hall for Health & Innovation, which was feted Friday at ribbon-cutting ceremony. The $19 million, 40,000-square-foot, two-story structure is connected to Sage Hall by a glass walkway, and moves environmental and health sciences labs under one roof.

For Thevenin, who has become passionate about research by working with assistant professor Kristine Dye to study Merkel cell polyomavirus and its links to cancer, Brown Hall serves as a spark of inspiration.

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"Currently I'm working on mutating a protein within that virus and seeing if its localization in the cell contributes to tumor formation," Thevenin said Friday. "I'm really excited that investments are being made within the sciences to help generate more discoveries such as my project. Who knows? Maybe I'll discover the how and why and that can help MCC (Merkel cell carcinoma) patients get better treatment."

That's precisely the spirit Cici and Hyatt Brown, longtime Stetson trustees and insurance billionaires, were seeking when they decided in 2018 to "invest" $18 million, the largest gift in school history, to help launch the project.

In addition to health sciences, environmental science and studies, public health, counselor education and sustainable food systems — with a new kitchen lab — will all be housed in Brown Hall.

Health sciences faculty and classes have been spread across the Stetson campus in different buildings.

"Forget about all the teaching, forget all that, just put those faculty members together and give them the opportunity to collaborate and to develop who knows what," Cici Brown said. "I find that just stunning."

As the need for workers in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — increases, Stetson has seen its enrollment in the sciences skyrocket.

How science education is changing

Matt Schrager, associate professor and co-chair of health sciences, said the original department was “kind of an exercise science program,” and has become “integrative physiology,” which is more geared toward students interested in medicine and other health professions.

The department has grown to close to 300 students, making it the largest major on campus.

"In the new building, classroom spaces will be more adaptable and move away from the traditional lecture-type classes," Schrager said. "More group activities will lead to more engagement from the students and that will be more easily done in … the adaptability of the new building."

It will increase the department's capacity to teach anatomy and physiology with state-of-the-art equipment, he said.

Even other science faculty members, who will remain in Sage Hall, are excited at the possibilities of being in closer proximity with health sciences.

Terence Farrell, professor of biology, said science education has evolved.

“How we teach science is changing more than what we teach,” Farrell said in an interview Thursday. “Back in the day, science was typically taught to undergraduates through lectures and then labs. Each lab was an isolated component, where the student came in and did something in a two- or three-hour period, and that was it. Now, there’s a much greater variety of active learning opportunities.”

Variation in course delivery helps make students “more flexible learners,” Farrell said, which better prepares them to tackle real-world issues.

An 'investment' 5 years in the making

During the ribbon-cutting event, Hyatt Brown, chairman of Brown & Brown Inc., told a story about his father, Adrian Brown, one of 10 children born on a tobacco and cotton farm in North Carolina.

He told his son about how land depreciates and sometimes cover crops — non-cash plants that cover the soil and enrich it — are necessary.

"He said, you know, when you get something from someplace, you need to give something back," Hyatt Brown said. "And that's what we've done here and it is an investment."

Cici Brown said the gift came with some direction.

"We gave the money and we said, 'Do not rush to get this done. Think it through, and through again, and through again, because we only want to do it once and we want to do it right, and let's take our time.' And we thought, frankly, it would take longer than it's taken and here we are with this exquisite facility," she said.

The project faced hurdles including the pandemic and supply-chain challenges to get building materials. And it's not complete. Many of the classrooms and labs remain unfinished.

Noel Painter, executive vice president and provost, reflected on first conceiving with then-President Wendy Libby in 2017 of "major projects we thought would move Stetson forward the farthest and the fastest."

Later that month, Painter and Libby were guests at the Browns' home, where they discussed some of those concepts. At a board meeting in February 2018, the Browns committed the $18 million.

"Certainly, your generous funding was the flint," he said to Cici and Hyatt Brown. "And your patience with us to get it right was the steel. Now, standing here today, your belief in Stetson, its students and its powerful mission will light all of Stetson on fire."

Architecture melds modern with traditional

Audrey Berlie, a junior from Naples majoring in environmental studies and minoring in food studies, said she expects to be in Brown Hall a lot. She is a research assistant for the Stetson Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience, which will be housed there.

She said the building is striking.

"I think it's a combination of modern with the Stetson tradition, brick, which is old-fashioned and beautiful," Berlie said. "It fuses it together really well."

The building's design also lends itself to collaboration, not just within disciplines, but across them.

"It's very open," she said. "The offices all have large windows. I think that's really important — especially coming out of COVID, where we didn't have these interactions — that they're really working on facilitating that in this building, along with all of the different organizations that are going to be here."

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This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Stetson unveils Brown Hall, built with largest gift in school history