When walking across campus this past week, students found themselves asking each other what the deal with the fence is.
Last week, an industrial fence went up following an announcement sent out Thursday, March 10 that released the College's formalized plans regarding construction of a new academic building on the campus in-between the Hagan Campus Center and the Information Technology building. The fence is accompanied by a collection of hay bales that also seem to have strangely accumulated along with the fence.
The notice, addressed by Assumption explained the parameters of the new academic building that is set to be completed before fall 2017 on the Salisbury Street campus. Of course, this means that two classes of students will graduate before the building is ready for use and that the campus will be a construction site for over a year. Groundbreaking in April 2016 will bring on the first of a long series of construction processes. In the memorandum, President Cesareo commented on the new construction project.
"[The building is] [a]n ambitious project that embodies our shared goals and aspirations, the new building will, once completed, transform both teaching and learning in ways that will strengthen the education that takes place at Assumption," commented President Cesareo, on the College's intentions with the new building.
The new building will be a grand total of 60,000 square feet. Like Testa, the College's most recently completed building, the new building will be built as an academic-style building, featuring 13 'flexible' classrooms that will differ in size. These classrooms will be equipped with some of the high-tech features that can be found in Testa, including seminar rooms and designated study areas. Students who participate in the College's theatre program will have a chance to utilize a performance hall and multi-function space fit for 400 guests, as well as a rehersal room for performance rehersals.
Aside from its use for classrooms, the building will be the new home for the Business Studies department faculty offices (which are currently housed in the basement of Desautels Hall). The building will also be the home for the College's Honors Program, as well as the Assumption Core Texts Program. The building will also establish for the first time two official center's, including the College's 'Center for Teaching Excellence' for the education department and a new 'Center for the Study of Ethics' for the philosophy department.
In October 2015, word of the soon-to-be-built building's lack of LEEDS certification was cracked open for the first time in the College's Le Provocateur newspaper. According to the publication, the lack of considerations for the use of envirornmentally conscious procedures and materials with the construction of the new building is much to the upset of the College's own professor of biology and member of the College's academic science department, Dr. Owen Sholes. This came as a surprise to many in the community due to the fact that the Testa Science Center, which opened in fall 2004, is a LEEDS certified builiding, complete with solar panels and state-of-the-art tech and science labs.
For further information about the new acaemic building and its construction, you can contact the College, at (508) 767-7000, or visit the school, on 500 Salisbury St. in Worcester, Mass.
