New ESUMS Opens Its ​“Clabs”

Mold was spotted growing in New Haven’s newest $85.5 million school building — and that was by design.

Encased in plastic, the mold was growing in a ​“clab” — a combination classroom- lab on the University of New Haven (UNH) campus. Middle and high schoolers are growing the mold as part of training to become engineers, mathematicians, architects and documentarians of the future.

Tuesday morning, the clab was one of the new features on display at a ribbon cutting ceremony and whirlwind tour of the new home for New Haven’s Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) on the UNH campus. As the 41st project proposed and completed under the New Haven School Construction Program, the 122,000 square-foot building houses 616 sixth through 12th graders in its five stories.

Designed by Svigals + Partners architects, the school sticks with its STEAM focus (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) from the moment one steps inside, busts of scientists and tech-trailblazers mounted alongside a main staircase. 

Tuesday marked the second day of classes officially in the new building, with students scurrying about as soon as the ribbon-cutting had ended.

After years of searching for a suitable location, moving students to swing spaces, feuding with West Haven residents, fighting an eminent domain claim, asking New Haven’s Board of Alders for more money and finally breaking ground in 2014, ESUMS Principal Medria Blue-Ellis said she found it a little surreal to have finally made it to the ribbon-cutting. With this year’s academic theme set as ​“Going for the Gold” in both schoolwide academics and statewide science and engineering competitions, she said that the new building feels particularly timely.

“It’s finally here,” she said. ​“It’s been a long time coming. I’m so happy to match the standard of excellence that we have in the classroom … a space where our hearts and minds can achieve everything we desire.”

“You, students, you deserve it,” she said, addressing the class of 2017, who had gathered to watch the ribbon cutting. ​“We here are showing what public education could be like.”

Surrounded by larger-than-life plaster casts of John Fitch, Edward Bouchet, Emma Baker and Grace Hopper, New Haven Mayor Toni Harp agreed.

“This school will help education materialize in the young people that we see today,” she said. ​“This is an exceptional project. Now we have a public school building on a private campus. It’s an entirely new collaborative approach to public education.”

“When I was in high school, I hadn’t even heard of robotics,” she added to laughs. ​“Think about how far we have come. It is in the best collective interest to do so for the future. As I become an older and older woman, I realize that everything we do is for the future.”

Some of the robotic-friendly future of which she spoke waited in the classrooms above. While the first floor of the new ESUMS is mostly ​“back of house” operations — a band room, small gym that stills smells of fresh rubber and paint, and ​“ground control” center for the school’s operating system — the second, third, fourth and fifth floors sport neat rows of purple lockers and classrooms designed with their STEAM-heavy purposes in mind. To mix students up, no floor is dedicated to a single grade. The third floor houses sixth and seventh graders, while the fourth comprises half middle schoolers and half high schoolers.

In a clab overlooking Boston Post Road, one finds all sorts of good biochemistry juju and sleek engineering equipment with a twist. A pristine classroom full of computers leads to a lab flooded with natural light, where the teaching method specific to ESUMS can kick in. There are the usual suspects: plastic-wrapped mold stains ready for study, schematics of cells in different stages of mitosis and myosis, an emergency station where students can flush out their eyes after an experiment gone wrong. A few microscopes peek out to wink at the brand new, green-edged lab goggles above them.

Then there are what Svigals + Partners’s Jay Brotman pointed to as decisions meant to put the STEAM focus front and center. Clabs on both sides of the building have cantilevered wings, so students working inside them can look out onto the shape — a cantilever is a long beam — and ​“think about going out into the world” as future engineers, mathematicians, scientists, and architects. The south side of the building has louvered blinds, intended to prevent solar heat gain in the warmer months. 

A high-tech architecture lab is intended to mimic a maker-space in the professional world. Past a still-empty engineering shop — ESUMS staff said they are just waiting on equipment — science and engineering teacher Hunter Smith was tending to last-minute tweaks to his high-tech haven. He made sure computer-animated design (CAD) programs were up and running for the classrooms new mac computers — and two refrigerator-sized 3D printers in the corner.

One hallway down, students were putting another feature of the new building into practice: glass partitions between classrooms and the hallway, which teachers can open up when they want to allow students to work on cushy chairs and couches in the hallways, widened at the ends specifically for that purpose.

“I love all the resources — it really is state of the art,” said graduating senior Alexcina Figueroa, who said she did not think she’d be in the new building before her graduation later this year.

“I think it gives me a sense of home,” she said, taking a break from filming the ribbon cutting for Blue-Ellis. ​“It’s also a big driver of motivation. When we were in a swing space, it wasn’t the same.”

Figueroa said ESUMS prepared her for the next chapter, during which she’ll pursue filmmaking in L.A. That was also the case for fellow student Nylie Saffian, who will study business, new media and marketing at the Rochester Institute of Technology after graduating this year.

“It feels real,” she said. ​“Now that we have a real school, it hits us that we are graduating.”