New Building on Campus Complete

McLaughlin Hall

Last fall we broke ground on the newest building for our campus, a new classroom building to be called McLaughlin Hall after one of our distinguished graduates and benefactors.  It had been two plus years since completing the tearing down of the old administration and library building and that work had left a big empty space in the rear of our campus.  During the spring we dealt with delays from the architect and from planning but as we entered May construction finally started.  All summer we have been watching the construction of the new building with growing excitement.  The weather has been kind enough to not cause too many delays.  That doesn't mean we didn't have problems but the majority of issues with it were caused by government's generally slow and plodding movement which isn't unexpected, though definitely frustrating. 

Still, everything has finally been resolved, the construction completed and Monday the new McLaughlin Hall classroom building will finally open.  It is the third building on our campus and is to the rear of the Friends Hall classroom building back where the old storage shed used to be, behind the old library.  The new building has two large classrooms with seating for 32 students.  Two local financial organizations sponsored the classrooms purchasing smart boards, lecterns, whiteboards, tables and chairs for seating and generally insuring that these will be state of the art classrooms.  It is an exciting time on campus and will definitely make for a fantastic fall term as we get the 2011-2012 academic year started.

For comparison, here is an aerial view of our campus taken in 2008.  You can see the white shed to the rear of the campus where the new building and parking lot now sit.  The college owns the field north of the lot and Clayton Strain so there is still a lot of room to grow.