NORTON, Mass. — Wheaton College broke ground Saturday on a $50 million new science center that the liberal-arts school hopes will position it as a haven for cutting-edge research.
The 99,000-square-foot project will include a new three-story building — to be known as the Center for Scientific Inquiry and Innovation — as well as the renovation of the first floor of the college’s current Science Center, which was built in 1968.
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“The Center for Scientific Inquiry and Innovation will dramatically change the Wheaton campus,” said Wheaton President Ronald Crutcher. “We are building a space that will serve all students, no matter their major. It will truly be a center for campus activity, and it will put the sciences more squarely at the center of a Wheaton education, which is fitting in our fast-moving, technological age.”
Tommy Ratliff, associate professor of mathematics and the faculty coordinator for the project, said the new facility’s laboratories are being designed to accommodate multidisciplinary research projects to facilitate collaboration. Wheaton is also using a sustainable design that is expected to earn the LEED silver rating.
The college’s board of trustees voted in May to move ahead with the project. The school, which has about 1,600 students, says a bit more than one-third of the funding has been raised thus far.
Construction on the new building is slated to begin in March, with the building to open during the spring of 2011. Renovations on the old Science Center are scheduled to be finished by fall 2011.
For more information about Wheaton College and its planned Center for Scientific Inquiry and Innovation, visit www.WheatonCollege.edu.
