- November 18, 2024
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Daytona State College’s Flagler Palm Coast Campus is unveiling a new, 24,000-square-foot classroom building that will almost double its student capacity.
Building 3 will be ready for students starting classes Aug. 25. On Aug. 11, workers swept construction dust and removed tools from its common areas.
“This is the wave of the future we’re seeing,” said Dean Kent Ryan, showing off a new high-tech, 82-seat lecture hall in the energy-efficient, Green Globe-certified building.
The campus’ current enrollment is about 2,400, communications director Laurie White said, but is expected to grow over the next decade with the area’s population growth.
The new building, designed by SchenkelShultz Architecture and built by H.J. High Construction, houses 13 40-seat classrooms in addition to the lecture hall, and each is about 900 square feet — an upgrade over the current main academic building, Building 2, which has nine classrooms, each about 500 square feet.
The new classrooms have interactive projectors and white boards and a digital lecture system that will let instructors lecture from laptops, tablets or smart phones.
Desks and chairs are on wheels, so that students can quickly move them for group projects or discussions, and then move them back for the next incoming class.
The building also contains the Flagler campus’ first on-site student bookstore and a computer lab, and power-outlet-equipped alcoves outside of the classrooms give students a place to sit down and plug in between classes.
And it comes with plenty of new parking: 300 spaces, Ryan said.
Most of the classes held in the new building will be general education classes like history and English survey courses.
Community education classes now held in the campus’ other academic building, Building 2, will be shifted to smaller classrooms in the amphitheater.
The new building was added in part to keep up with rising enrollment needs, White said. But, she said, “We certainly hope it will attract more students. To have a state-of-the-art facility to learn in, not many places have that.”
The college will host a ribbon cutting for the new building at 4 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14 at the campus at 3000 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
