The College of Health Sciences has a new home – Behrakis Health Sciences Center, a $37 million state-of-the-art facility.

Besides the aesthetic appeal of the building, which includes two three-story atriums and a glass enclosed granite staircase, Behrakis offers up-to-date resources to the health science department and much needed classroom space on campus.

The Physical Plant Project Manager Nancy May said that the transition and move into the building has gone smoothly. Admissions was the last to make the move to Behrakis. May said that the only problem occurred when the granite stairs inside the first floor atrium had to be repaired because anchors were used that were not stainless steel. The rusted anchors were replaced and the stairs are now back in place.

Behrakis is an interdisciplinary practice site where students can apply the skills that they obtained in the classroom. Included in the upper levels of the building are gross anatomy, neuroanatomy and osteology laboratories. Instructional labs for athletic training, medical laboratory science, nursing, physical therapy, respiratory therapy and physician’s assistant. Also included are instructional labs for biotechnology, general biology and microbiology.

The center also offers two lecture halls, one that seats 100 students and the other 170 students. Case rooms and seminar rooms, all with state-of-the-art audio-visual telecommunication systems, also fill the facility. These lecture halls are not specifically reserved for health science classes.

Besides added classrooms and labs, Behrakis houses the offices of undergraduate and graduate student services for the College of Health Sciences, the office of the Dean of Bouve College as well as the university’s admissions center. The admissions office, which moved from Richard’s Hall, has a new addition to it’s office- a theater. When perspective students visit Northeastern, they will view a film before heading out to tour campus.

Attached to the facility is an underground parking garage offering 180 parking spaces to faculty, staff and students. Forty spaces are reserved for preferred parking, another 40 are reserved for visitors to the admissions office and five spaces are reserved for outside clinical patients.

The facility is handicap accessible and also has three elevators- one service elevator and two general access elevators.