What’s With All the Construction on Campus?

By: Brady Patton

These days, a student can’t be on campus without noticing all of the construction. You can hear it in the classrooms and see it from the parking lot. Vice President and Provost of the Montgomery College Germantown campus Dr. Sanjay Rai explained what’s going on.

First MC-Germantown built a parking lot behind the High Technology building; but according to Dr. Rai, the school doesn’t have permission to use the parking spaces yet. The college needs to plant some trees that soak up a lot of water before they can get the permit, and the trees can only be planted in warm weather. Dr. Rai thinks that by the middle of the summer semester the parking spaces will be available to use.

Next, the Germantown campus has begun plans for a Bioscience Education Center with 141,000 square feet of biotechnology and science laboratories. According to Dr. Rai, the bioscience building is going to be used for labs and classrooms and will include the college working with companies to give students experience with their companies. The building will cost $88 million, but is being paid for completely by the county and the state, with a fifty-fifty split. Dr. Rai said that the addition of the building will not raise the cost of tuition, in fact he hopes the construction lowers tuiton because the school will be able to accommodate more students. Dr. Rai says the construction of the building will be done during the 2014 school year. Michael Harrington, a student here at Montgomery College expressed his “hope that adding the new science building will free up room in the other buildings for more classes.” According to Dr. Rai, that is the goal of the new bioscience building.

Last is the hospital; according to Dr. Rai, the construction of the building is being paid for by the hospital company itself with no cost to the college. The addition of a hospital on the campus will give Germantown campus nursing majors the ability to stay on campus for their courses. There is no expected time frame for the finish of the hospital.

The bottom line? Germantown campus is vibrant and continuing to get better. We have many improvements to look forward to!