Allan Appel Photo
GCC’s Allied Health Dept. Chair Marcia Doran said the CT Scan will train students in nuclear medicine, radiation therapy, and radiography.
The CT Scan machine was not quite unpacked yet or set up for teaching but it had already been lifted by sections into one of six bright science labs at Gateway Community College’s nearly finished new downtown campus.
Next week the president moves into her fourth-floor offices. Then by staggered phases commencing July 6 the largest community college in the state moves all the rest of its staff and stuff into the light and airy new building whose address is 20 Church St. Then it gears up for an Aug. 29 grand opening and a formal first day of classes on Sept.r 4.
Meanwhile, Gateway gave the press a preview Friday afternoon. After years of anticipation, the gleaming new downtown campus is now actually something to see.
GCC spokeswoman Evelyn Gard said the brightness and newness of the campus have helped boost registration i8 percent over this time last year, with the school expecting to be the home this fall of approximately 7,500 credit-seeking students.
The 360,000 square-foot campus has two four-story buildings, a 600-car garage camouflaged by a “green wall,” 90 classrooms, and 22 labs, among other high tech and energy-saving features. Total cost: $198 million, mainly paid for by the state.
At Friday’s tour, reporters were walked through a sunny, window-lit cascading staircase, a kind of ascending central atrium that climbs from the first to the fourth floors. It culminates on the fourth floor, at one end of a long, broad skylight-lit corridor that stretches from the woodsy and grassy roof garden at the southern end, across the George Street bridge area, which will be the scene of 30-foot high arts installations, to the far end of the building at Crown Street.
The “internal street” at George Street Bridge gives a panorama of New Haven looking east.
Administrative offices will sit on the east side of this corridor, which officials call an “internal street.” On the west side of the street are smaller “finger” corridors, off of which the classrooms sprout, many of them built in a tiered fashion seating up to 100.
The atrium style of the building and particularly the unifying stairway’s breadth offer a passageway on the left . They also offer an ascending stadium-style meeting place on the right. The aim: to promote student gathering and interaction that has not been possible in the Long Wharf campus, which some faculty not so sentimentally referred to as “the bunker.”
That’s now all the past.
“They’re proper tables,” said student Anne Rathey of the furniture deployed in classroom N-401.
Working the press event to show off its bright shiny new spaces, GCC student Anne Rathey particularly noted the group-size tables that will furnish many of the classrooms. At the Long Wharf classrooms she has had to sit at smallish single seats with tiny desk space. Rathey said she can now spread out her computer and other gear.
“I get excited about tables,” said the German-born psychology major.
She praised the merging of the two campuses. Last year Rathey had two courses she needed to take, one in North Haven campus and one at Long Wharf. The campuses were ten minutes apart, so it was not possible to drive fast enough to take them the same semester. An added plus of the Church Street location: she can meet her husband, who is associated with Yale, downtown for lunch.
Faculty were also providing positive reviews as they too got a first look at their new digs. Veteran English Professor Virginia Woolums said of the old campus that when classes concluded there, “People want to leave. Here they’ll want to stay.”
Library Director Clara Ogbaa said GCC’s collections belong to the state. Any New Havener can take out up to three books.
Late on Friday Library Director Clara Ogbaa was supervising the deployment of what she described as her favorite feature: five collaborative circular and highly wired work stations for professors and students that will be the centerpiece of GCC’s “Learning Commons,” a key part of its library. It’s located on the inside of the arched radius of windows at the southern end of the building looking out on Route 34, which official press materials describe as “the icon for Gateway’s new campus.”
The two-story, 60 – 000-volume library has the service and talky area on the third level, with an elegant curving stairway leading down to the quiet study area and stacks below. That includes a kids’ library space, for the children of staffers and students. The ample southern light, saving electricity as well as eyes, is one of many green features of the building.
GCC roof garden looking at Knights of Columbus.
As is the roof garden, immediately above the library, with its grasses already waving in the wind, its wooden deck, and other permeable features. Perkins + Wil architect Shelley Einbinder, the project manager for the building, offered assurance that there is a sophisticated leak alarm system before water drops on library books below.
After the building tours concluded, speakers like Wall Street Journal writer David Wessel hailed the indispensability of institutions like the new GCC. “The future of America in many ways depends more on what happens here than at Yale. Yale does fine at PhDs, but they aren’t going to teach someone to be a respiratory therapist. They’re [the new community colleges] the new escalator of upward mobility for America,” he said.
Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel and GCC Prez Dorsey Kendrick.
The wall running down the third and fourth floor side of the atrium was also officially dedicated as the “president’s learning wall” in honor of Dorsey Kendrick, GCC’s inspirational leader since 1999. Quotations culled by her staff from her speeches adorn the wall, including “Greatness is not where we are, but in what direction we are moving.”
New Haveners will also be the beneficiaries of an expanded culinary arts program in the new campus: eight student mini-kitchens for training along with a commercial kitchen/restaurant open to the public (by appointment), to be called Cafe Vincenzo. It will seat 48 people and be the main feature of the ground floor of the south building.
Spokesperson Gard said that GCC is still holding onto its North Haven campus, where the solar and automotive programs continue. At the Long Wharf campus, the college is working with the city on developing a new vo-tech high school.
Enrollment is going to go way up. I hope they have enough room. This is now the crown jewel of CT 2 year colleges. The fact that it's in the heart of downtown is going to do wonders for the area, especially Church Street - which needs some revitalization.