To: The Wellesley College Community
From: President Paula A. Johnson
Re: A Major Milestone for Our Science Complex
Date: December 1, 2021
I am extremely proud to share the news that late last month, the College received approval to begin our phased move-in process for new buildings in the Science Complex so that we can welcome students and open to our community at the start of the spring semester.
The completion of these buildings marks the final step in the creation of our Science Complex—the largest construction project the College has undertaken in more than a century. With nearly 100,000 square feet of newly constructed space, the complex now boasts a total of 36 classrooms, 108 laboratories, and 158 faculty and staff offices within the L-wing, E-wing, and new buildings. The new buildings include the Research, Innovation, and Teaching Building; the Angle Building, which houses the Frost Center for the Environment; the Chao Foundation Innovation Hub; and several reimagined spaces in the E-wing, such as the Horticulture and Ecology Lab. The complex is also on target to achieve LEED Platinum Certification for sustainable design.
The complex vastly expands the opportunities for STEM research, teaching, and learning at Wellesley and will serve as a hub for collaboration, discovery, and interdisciplinary study for the entire campus community. For example, the newly developed interdisciplinary course on the climate crisis, taught by faculty from across all divisions of the College, will be held in one of the complex’s lecture halls.
The new buildings’ open classrooms, windows, and common spaces are designed to make science visible and accessible. The interdisciplinary laboratory spaces will bring together faculty and students from different departments to explore some of the grand challenges of our time, from understanding the human brain and behavior, to developing sustainable food and agricultural systems, to addressing racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence.
While this project was an immense undertaking in its own right, the pandemic, with its attendant economic shocks and supply chain constraints, made it more difficult. In the face of these complications, our staff and faculty and our construction partners worked together to establish a safe work environment and to keep the project running on time and on budget. I am proud that at every stage, we stayed true to our diversity goals and we consistently exceeded industry standards for people of color and women contributing to the project as architects, designers, and builders.
So many members of our community have contributed to this effort. I’d like to thank our excellent, committed team, including our Facilities staff, our science faculty, and our partners at Turner Construction Company and SOM Architects. I am also grateful for the support of the College’s trustees and senior leadership, the important work of the Development team, and the generosity of our donors.
I’d like to acknowledge, in particular, our Science Center core project team: Dave Chakraborty, Ann Velenchik, Cathy Summa, Michelle Maheu, Tim Singleton, Devon Gallant, Megan Núñez, Deb Spielman, Lesley Corda-Majeski, and Dick French. They consistently demonstrated remarkable leadership, flexibility, and drive in helping us reach this moment.
Throughout the past five years of planning and construction, we have benefited from the support and patience of our Science Center faculty, students, and staff, whose work has been complicated by this project that is so essential to the long-term future of science at Wellesley.
Although we are all excited to tour the finished complex, we must be patient while we wait for the construction and move-in to be completed. After the new buildings open to students and the College community in late January, we will celebrate this milestone with various events throughout 2022. Stay tuned for more details.
The Science Complex, together with Global Flora, the Whitin Observatory, and the gardens and greenhouses that comprise Science Hill, reflects both the remarkable vision of our founders, Pauline and Henry Durant, who believed that hands-on experience studying science should be a hallmark of a women’s college and integral to the liberal arts, and the College’s enduring commitment to educating and empowering diverse women leaders in STEM.
I look forward to celebrating this moment with you in the new year, but even more so, I look forward to witnessing the extraordinary teaching, mentoring, research, and innovation that our faculty, staff, and students—across all disciplines—will undertake in the new complex as they work to solve some of the world’s most urgent problems.
