University move to Belval delayed

(CS/chl) The move of the University of Luxembourg's arts faculty to the new Belval campus will not take place in 2014, rector Ralf Tarrach told faculty staff on Wednesday.

The Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) is currently housed at the Walferdange campus and employs 400 faculty members with 2,500 registered students.

The faculty was meant to move to the new Belval campus in the summer of 2014.

However, with snap elections unexpectedly held in October these plans have been delayed. Tarrach had previously warned that such a delay could occur.

Chief Operating Officer Alfred Funk confirmed the news. He explained that the new campus building is still missing key IT infrastructure. However, snap elections got in the way of publishing an advertisement with a view of finding a suitable contractor.

The high-speed network at the campus will cost around 30 million euros with over 12,000 sockets and 700 kilometres of cables needed to equip the faculty's new site.

Whether the budget will stay the same under the new government is not yet known, and Funk does not expect a decision to be made until early 2014.

From then on, the completion of the project should take another 10 to 12 months. However, since the faculty cannot move in the middle of term, the Belval campus might not welcome its new occupants until autumn 2015.