St. Thomas University continues to pursue a strategic nine-year plan involving major physical expan­sion to increase its capacity along with a new merger, acquisition or partnership to help realize it. The need for expansion stems from the university’s record high enrollment numbers. St. Thomas University President David A. Armstrong said the student head­count this past fall of 2025, marking the start of a new academic year, was “at an all-time high” of 8,720 and STU aims to have more than 9,000 students next year. “Every year for the last several years we’ve had our largest gradu­ating class in history,” he said. “This will be another one. And then, right now, we are on track to have our eighth straight year of record enrollment for 2026-27, and so that’s what we want to do, is keep that going.” Part of keeping up that momen­tum is making space for growth as enrollment numbers increase. “Our nine-year strategic vision is to pursue excellence in every­thing that we do, and the goals for that nine-year strategic vision is to become one of the top 25 Catholic universities in the country and to become the great Catholic university of the South,” he said. “And so we know that growth will be a part of that, excellence in our programs will be a part of that, and then the impact that we have in the region will be a big part of that. And then hopefully the country and the world.” As part of that plan, the university will increase its capacity through the development of three major projects, including the addition of a third building to the Gus Machado College of Business complex, a nursing and allied health science building, and an athletic arena. “The first is the third building to our Machado complex, the Gus Machado College of Business com­plex … that will probably be the building that we’ll get to fastest,” President Armstrong said. “And then we need to build a nursing and allied health science build­ing because of the growth of our nursing and allied health science programs…. And then the third building is an athletic arena; we were looking to build an auxiliary gym because of our growth of athletics…. And so we decided to build something bigger than our current Fernandez Family Center and actually build an arena.” Mr. Armstrong added that the new science building focusing on nursing and allied health science is likely to cost $60 million to $80 million while the athletic arena may cost $20 million to $30 mil­lion. These projects, he said, will likely be funded by the university itself, private donations and poten­tially financing. “It’ll be a combination of capital that we have made through our growth, so self-funded,” President Armstrong said. “It will, most like­ly, the majority of it, will be funded by private donations, and then there could be some financing for some of it. And then the fourth is, we hope the state sees what we’re trying to accomplish and would support us in, whether it’s the programming or the capital projects, because we know that it’s going to be a great benefit to the state.” The university is also working on a confidential agreement to merge, acquire or partner with another institution. “Also, this is a very interest­ing time in higher ed where you see a lot of smaller, faith-based institutions closing, especially in the Midwest and the Northeast, and we are looking at possibly merging, acquiring or partnering with other institutions to grow our footprint,” he said. “And so that is ongoing. We’ve been working with that for now eight months, and having discussions with other entities and other schools, and so that’s going to help us achieve our nine-year vision also.” Recent developments at STU, the university president said, include opening a new 545-bed residence hall and an eight-lane bowling alley. STU also broke ground on a stadium project open­ing next fall that will expand upon the AutoNation Field and serve as the home for football, lacrosse, soccer and rugby. The university is starting new programs as well as adding more concentrations and, with the launch of STU Global, it’s offering six undergraduate degree programs online: B.B.A. in management, B.B.A. in finance, B.B.A. in marketing management, B.B.A. in sports administration, B.A. in organizational leadership and B.A. in Catholic education. “We’re starting a marine en­vironmental science program, industrial organization psychol­ogy,” Mr. Armstrong said. “We will [be] creating more concentrations within our nursing program.” Last year, STU was recognized as one of the best colleges in the nation to work for, according to the Great Colleges to Work For® program, and is one of only three institutions to achieve Honor Roll status across ten recognition cat­egories. He said the university’s faculty, which are nicknamed “STUwards,” played a big role. “We believe that our STUwards are the best, and they have been crucial in all the work that we’ve done to be an institution that’s on the rise,” Mr. Armstrong said, “and so to be recognized for that really meant a lot to us as a university.” Another accomplishment, he said, was that the STU College of Law achieved an 87.3% bar passage rate in July 2025. The College of Law’s trial team also won a 2026 national online championship title. “This fall, we became the largest law school in the state of Florida for traditional JD programs,” Mr. Armstrong said. “We have the most JDs, the full-time traditional juris doctors and, last July, we had our … highest in-school history bar exam result of 87.3%, and our ultimate goal is to be tops in the state in the bar exam, but what’s been fantastic is our mock trial teams have won state and national championships this year.” “And so our College of Law is really asserting itself, and we’re one of the largest producers of Hispanic women judges in the country, if not the largest,” he continued. “We’re one of the most diverse law schools in the country; we take great pride in that, and we also, a lot of our gradu­ates go into public law. We’re one of the largest producers of public law servants in the legal field in the country.” Athletically, Mr. Armstrong said, St. Thomas teams “continue to win and have great competitive programs.” “But our ultimate goal is to be a driver, an economic engine in Miami Gardens and in the region, in South Florida,” he said, “and so we will continue to do the things necessary to be a viable, positive influence in the regional economy and for the state of Florida.” The post Growing St. Thomas University looks for acquisition or merger appeared first on Miami Today. ...read more read less