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Augusta Prep teacher Eric Miller already knows how he and his students will use the school’s new science and technology facility.
“We’re going to build a car,” the school’s motorsports engineering instructor said. “We build electric cars, so we’ll build a fresh one when we get in, maybe build a motorcycle and whatever else they want to build; sky’s the limit.”
For Augusta Prep officials who broke ground Tuesday on the W. Rodger Giles Institute for Inquiry, the sky is literally the limit. The institute’s astronaut logo, Head of School Derrick Willard said, helps symbolize the future of currently-enrolled Prep 2-year-olds who are slated to graduate in 2038, in a world that already includes NASA, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket and China’s space agency all working to send humans to Mars.
“In response to current and future challenges we can’t even imagine, we have developed a vision for a unique future-facing sciences and engineering building that prepares our students for the workplaces of the future,” Willard said.
On the drawing board:Science, technology at forefront for new center in works at Augusta Preparatory Day School
The institute is named for the Augusta-area restaurateur and commercial real estate investor who died in 2018 and bequeathed money to Prep to help establish the facility.
The two-story structure totaling about 19,000 square feet is designed to accommodate larger, more adaptive laboratory space for emerging classes at Prep such as robotics, engineering and computer science. The institute is expected to be completed by early 2024.
Thomas Burnside, who graduated from Prep in 1984, now is chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees. He called Prep’s faculty its “greatest asset” that has been tasked with delivering quality education with “inferior facilities” that steadily show their age.
“Now I can say that because most of the science classes and labs that are in service here today were the very same ones that I learned in about 40 years ago back before we even had computers here,” he said. “To say they’re outdated may be a bit of an understatement, so we as a board determined and decided that it was time for our facilities to catch up with our curriculum. And today, we take a giant step forward in that process.”
The school has raised $9.3 million from donors to pay for the building’s complete construction, Prep Director of Development Pam Weinberger said. An additional $1.9 million is being raised to establish an endowment to maintain the institute.
Founded in 1961, the private school moved to its current 50-acre Martinez campus on Flowing Wells Road in 1963.
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