The Facilities Planning and Construction Committee of the UT System Board of Regents approved plans for the Texas Advanced Computing Center Office Building project and the first phase of the Dell Medical School project at its meeting Wednesday.

The computing center is a research center on the J.J. Pickle Research Campus that houses a variety of advanced computing technologies. President William Powers Jr. presented the project to the board and said the University intends to increase the computing center’s staff from 127 to 150 individuals and construct a visualization lab.

“TACC is one of our high priorities on the campus and has been one of the most successful enterprises over the last decade,” Powers said. “It has grown over the last decade, has much more activity at TACC itself and it has simply outgrown its office space.”

The committee also approved the first phase of the Dell Medical School project, which included a design development plan, an amendment to the Capital Improvement Program to revise funding and an appropriation of other funding from other sources.

The design plans consisted of an education and administration building, a research building, a medical office building and a parking garage — totaling 578,000 square feet of new buildings. The predicted total project cost is $334 million. 

Board Chairman Paul Foster will present recommendations at Thursday’s meeting for developing a new screening process for open-record requests filed by regents. 

All decisions made by the board committees on Wednesday are subject to approval by the full board at Thursday’s meeting.