Roanoke College breaks ground on first phase of Science Center construction

Roanoke College broke ground on the first phase of its new forward-looking Science Center on Saturday, April 20, kicking off a project that will benefit every future Maroon.

The Science Center will reimagine three major buildings on campus to create a state-of-the-art hub for STEM learning and research.

Construction will be done in phases starting with the demolition of the circa-1970s Massengill Auditorium. In its place, a new $30 million facility will be built. Future phases also call for major renovations of the neighboring Life Science and Trexler Hall buildings.

The groundbreaking and farewell to Massengill Auditorium coincided with Roanoke’s annual Alumni Weekend celebration and the return of hundreds of graduates to campus.

"The sky is truly the limit for a place like Roanoke College with the remarkable students and faculty that we have," President Frank Shushok Jr. said. 

The Science Center is a transformational project that will serve some of Roanoke’s most popular majors and house one-third of all campus courses. 

"Every future student, regardless of major will take science, technology, engineering and mathematics in that facility as part of their educational foundation," Bettie Sue Masters '59, a member of the science center advisory board, said. "The laboratories will provide modern educational instrumentation and infrastructure for STEM research to produce graduates who are highly competitive and in academia and industry."

In addition to classes, more than half of all student research projects will happen in the Science Center. The facility’s next-generation design will carry students into a new era of discovery with high-power lab rooms, interactive study spaces, collaborative areas, and more technological opportunities for greater accessibility, innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration.  

"To echo a line from our alma mater, years come and go, but we will always know that dear old Massengill served us well," Len Pysh, professor of biology said. "Massengill has served as a place for magic, for instruction in courses from history to business, education to health and exercise science, and for inquiry by students conducting research from the cellular level to the cosmos." 

The Science Center initiative was made possible by generous donors who’ve collectively given $55 million to date toward an overall goal of $60 million for all phases of the project.  

Charlottesville-based architecture firm VMDO is managing the project. VMDO previously aided Roanoke College in the design of the cutting-edge Cregger Center unveiled in 2016.