Today, Kansas University’s School of Pharmacy will mark its 125th anniversary in its shiny new building.

A dedication ceremony for the facility this morning will bring in dignitaries and other stakeholders from around the country.

“Everyone’s very proud and very, very pleased to be going through this dedication and letting more of the people of Kansas see what we’ve got here,” said Ken Audus, dean of KU’s School of Pharmacy.

What they’ve got is a $45 million, 110,000-square-foot, three-story new building that will help — along with an expansion in Wichita — to double the school’s capacity to train new pharmacists.

Gary Sherrer, chairman of the Kansas Board of Regents, said the state’s pharmacist shortage, especially in rural areas, has been well-documented.

“This is just an illustration to me of how the university system is very capable, given the resources, to provide the people that the state needs,” Sherrer said.

Sherrer and Audus are scheduled to join other speakers today, including Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson and KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little.

Audus said one great feature of the building is its ability to function as a distance learning site.

It’s wired to deliver instruction to a number of distant sites — video cameras in classrooms will capture not only the teacher, but also students’ voices and images to be transported across the state, nation and world.

“It’s certainly a great resource for the outreach mission of the university,” Audus said.

Students began taking classes there this semester, and two 175-seat classrooms feature large projection screens, and flat screen televisions to aid in the learning process.

The building also is the home to the first cafeteria on KU’s West Campus, called the Mortar and Pestle Cafe.

A new pharmacy museum on the first floor is open now to the public, and an old-time soda fountain will be operational just as soon as it gets inspected by the health department, Audus said.

The school hopes to use the facility to continue its successes — it ranks second nationally in the amount of research funding it receives annually from the National Institutes of Health, and is ranked 18th in the country by U.S. News and World Report among public university pharmacy programs.

The state of Kansas authorized $50 million in state bonds for the building on KU’s West Campus and corresponding expansion in Wichita.

But the building may soon get some of that cost back — it has applied for reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a basement it constructed to FEMA emergency shelter standards.

If FEMA approves the application, the school could be partially reimbursed for the about $500,000 it spent to construct the basement using reinforced steel and other standards required by the agency.