Penn Vet opens $17 million classroom, lab facility at New Bolton Center campus

Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine opened a $17 million classroom facility this academic year.

The Gail P. Riepe Center for Advanced Veterinary Education houses classrooms and simulators for veterinary students. It is located on Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center campus, about 40 miles southwest of Philadelphia.

The center “gives students a facility purpose-built for hands-on learning,” along with “a space to rest and recharge between long clinical days,” a Penn Vet spokesperson wrote in a statement.

“It reflects both rigorous training and genuine care for our students’ well-being,” the spokesperson added.

Spanning 11,800 square feet, the facility has two wings around an outdoor courtyard. The first wing houses several classrooms and informal learning spaces, and the other contains a simulation lab with high-fidelity simulators for large-animal veterinary training.

The facility also features a fabrication lab with equipment such as 3D printers, aimed at helping students and faculty design their own training tools and models to support veterinary education.

In the press release, the New Bolton Center’s associate director of academic and community affairs Liz Arbittier emphasized that a CT scan “taken by our own diagnostic imaging team on Monday can be segmented, printed, and in a resident and student’s hands by Friday.”

The center was previously discussed by Penn’s Board of Trustees in 2024, and was first expected to open last spring.

Penn Vet dean Andrew Hoffman noted in his opening remarks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony that “you need only experience the Riepe Center, inside and out, to recognize that all of these elements have come together to Ben Franklin’s specifications.”

He also thanked “Gail, Jim, and Christa Riepe” for their “lead gift” funding the center.

The New Bolton Center campus is located in Kennett Square, and currently hosts Penn Vet’s Hospital for Large Animals, which opened in 1964.

The Riepe Center is not the only construction project at the New Bolton Center. Construction is scheduled to begin on the Penn Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory this fall. The laboratory is expected to span 63,000 square feet and will consolidate the Pennsylvania Equine Toxicology Research Laboratory and the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System.

---