New College Breaks Ground on New Academic Center

Blue skies and bright sunshine were a reflection of the optimism felt by participants and celebrants alike on Tuesday, January 26, as New College of Florida broke ground on the most significant academic building to be constructed on the campus in nearly twenty years.

Located at the corner of US 41 and College Drive, the new $11 million signature Academic Center and Plaza will boldly announce the entrance to the state honors college for the liberal arts and sciences to more than 55,000 daily passers-by along Sarasota’s North Tamiami Trail.  The building and its spacious outdoor plaza will connect with the adjacent Jane Bancroft Cook Library.

Donning white and blue hardhats and picking up golden shovels, representatives of the administration, faculty, student body and boards of trustees for New College and the New College Foundation dug into the earth as dirt flew to mark this auspicious occasion. Following the formal ceremony, a host of students and alums took their turns with the shovels as well. All enjoyed refreshments under the tent, courtesy of the groundbreaking sponsor, Ajax Building Corporation.

Designed by internationally-acclaimed architects and urban planners Moule & Polyzoides of Pasadena, California, and constructed by Ajax Building Corporation of Florida, the new 35,000 square-foot, LEED-certified facility will contain classrooms, faculty offices and a courtyard café that will be open to the public upon the building’s completion. Funding for the project was provided by the State of Florida.

“The fact that the entire Academic Center will be dedicated to classrooms, seminar spaces and faculty offices nicely captures the academic focus of our campus,” stated President Mike Michalson in his opening remarks.  “It promises to be a true ‘center’ of campus life.”

The Academic Center is a key component of the 2006 Campus Master Plan developed following the College’s designation as the state’s independent honors college in 2001.

Joining Michalson at the podium was Provost Charlene Callahan, whose association with New College goes back to the mid-1970s, when the then-private college merged with the State University System. She reflected on an early-on willingness to make creative use of space and resources.

“I recall when faculty offices in the upstairs of the barn still smelled like a hayloft and had unwanted wildlife; when the walls of the classrooms and labs in the old natural sciences building were so thin that we could all share in lectures, tutorials and the smell of formaldehyde; when the makeshift library was in a mansion on the bay; and when the social sciences building, once the servants’ quarters for the Ringlings, had no heat,” she said.  “….For the next 25 years we continued to make do with very limited resources and attention… becoming the best public liberal arts college in America.”

Callahan noted that “we dreamed of a real science building, with a beautiful library, with a marine science lab on the bay,” all of which came to pass with the construction of the Heiser Natural Sciences Center, the Jane Bancroft Cook Library and the Pritzker Marine Biology Research Center.

“This building is part of that dream,” Callahan continued. “We will finally have a building designed to serve the educational program; real classrooms, real offices, able to accommodate latest technology.  It also reflects strong support from the state, and affirms our status as a fully participating member of the State University System.  And it reflects the assumption that we will continue to grow and prosper.”

Speakers at the ceremony also included William Byrne, president of Ajax Building Corporation; Chase William Sokolow, immediate past co-president of the New College Student Alliance; Andrew Walker, president of the New College Foundation; and Colonel Mickey Presha, chair of the New College Board of Trustees.  Remarks from architects Moule & Polyzoides were read by John Martin, vice president for finance and administration.

The building is scheduled to be completed by late fall 2010.

To learn more about New College’s new Academic Center and Plaza, please contact the Office of Public Affairs at (941) 487-4153 or email [email protected]. For information on naming opportunities associated with the Center or other ways that you can help support New College, contact the New College Foundation at (941) 487-4800.