Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Texas State University Breaks Ground on Media Building

  • By Matt Jones
  • 08/23/21

Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, broke ground last week on a new media building. Live Oak Hall will serve students and faculty from the College of Fine Arts and Communication and feature amenities like a film soundstage, a TV studio, a recording mix classroom, an editing lab, a foley room for sound effects, and administrative offices and classrooms. The facility comes with an estimated cost of $10 million and is scheduled to open its doors in time for the fall 2022 semester.

University officials said that the new building comes as the Department of Theater and Dance continues to grow; theatre enrollment has grown by 53% across the last five years, and the university’s film concentration is also picking up steam. Live Oak Hall will also provide students from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication with their own television studio for the first time. Its media lab and classroom space will facilitate television news courses, and the new studio and control room will play home to the “Bobcat Update,” the university newscast.

Other amenities include greenscreen technology for the soundstage and television studio; a sound recording classroom with surround-sound capabilities and an isolation sound recording booth; and broadband fiber for live broadcast streaming capabilities. Students will also use the studio to produce sports and interview programs.

“San Marcos is situated between Austin and San Antonio, two cities with vibrant independent film communities where film graduates are in demand,” said the university in a news release. “With the advent of digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Hulu, the global demand for graduates with both creative and technical skills will continue to rise, and Texas State is uniquely situated to create a program that feeds both the curricular demand of students and the industry that will hire them.”

The 10,291-square-foot facility was designed by project architects the Lawrence Group, which has offices in Austin and New York and specializes in higher education and media/broadcast studios.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Dallas ISD Voters Approve $6.2B Bond Package

    Dallas ISD voters have approved a record-setting $6.2-billion bond package that district leaders say will modernize aging campuses, eliminate portable classrooms and reshape learning environments across one of the nation’s largest school systems.

  • Nashville Elementary School Receives LEED Gold Certification

    Goodlettsville Elementary School, part of Metro Nashville Public Schools in Nashville, Tenn., recently achieved LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), according to a news release. The 81,750-square-foot school opened in 2023 and was designed by Goodwyn Mills Cawood (GMC).

  • Spaces4Learning Announces 2026 Product Award Winners

    Spaces4Learning has just announced the winners of the 2026 Product Awards! The award program spotlights outstanding product development achievements of manufacturers and suppliers whose products or services are considered to be particularly noteworthy in their ability to enhance K–12 and higher-education learning environments.

  • UTampa Breaks Ground on STEM Academic Facility

    The University of Tampa in Tampa, Fla., recently broke ground on one of its largest academic facilities ever, according to a news release. The Dickey Science Innovation Center will measure 153,000 square feet and has a scheduled completion date of fall 2028.