Harold Goldstein
Science will have a new home in The Center for the Sciences, a new building project currently being developed near the Mason Street entrance to Pierce College.
The idea for the Center for the Sciences first came about in 2000 when Pierce College went through a master planning process, which included creating a central building for the science-related departments.
“[This project] is part of the college’s bond construction program,” said Robert Garber, president of Pierce. “The college developed the facilities master plan that identified the projects that we would need to do to enhance our educational program and better serve students.
“This project ended up as one of the top priorities.” “It became a possibility of actually being built when a bond was passed, Prop A, in 2003,” said James Rikel, Ph.D., chair of the Life Science department.
The Center for the Sciences will be able to contain over 6,000 students within the general vicinity, according to Rikel. “The completed facility”, said Rikel, “will accommodate up to 6,000 students taking a variety of science-related classes each semester. This will make it the largest complex in the 60-year history of Pierce College.”
Replacing the old bungalows that housed general education classes, the Center for the Sciences will bring together specific subjects and breathe new life into all these subjects in one building. “In education, no field is always on the edge of development more than the sciences that we teach,” said Garber, “so it gives us an opportunity to build new classrooms, new labs that will be able to incorporate the newest technology and developments in that field to keep pace with where the future of teaching is today.”
The center will be 100,000 square feet consisting of four two-story buildings and a one-story structure, all surrounding an interior courtyard. It will contain 22 laboratories, seven lecture rooms, a planetarium, animal teaching hospital, 40 faculty offices, and various prep rooms.
The center’s occupants will consist of life science, chemistry, physics & planetary sciences, and nursing departments and a veterinary technology program. “It has some unique facilities,” says Rikel. “Not only is this place modern, it is all together,” he said. With the center encompassing all educated subjects of science, the old classrooms that once held these classes will be revamped and regenerated for the college campus.
“[The old] buildings are going to be rebuilt and redesigned to add new classrooms for other subjects,” Garber said, “but the net effect is that there are going to be more classrooms on campus because we have this new building and the old buildings are still going to be there, used for other purposes.” The overall budget for this development project is approximately $55 million.
“That covers, what they call, both the hard and soft costs. The hard costs would be the actual construction of the building. The soft costs would include the design of the building, the engineering of it, the management of it being built and any equipment you might buy for it,” said Rikel. Rikel and Garber said the project is supposed to be completed by the summer of 2009.
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