Augusta Preparatory, a private school in Martinez, Ga., has broken ground on an addition focused on science and technology.
The Augusta Chronicle reports that the W. Rodger Giles Institute for Inquiry will be a two-story 19,000-square-foot structure that will provide larger, more adaptive laboratory space for classes such as robotics, engineering and computer science.
The institute is expected to be completed by early 2024.
The facility is named for an Augusta-area businessman who died in 2018 and bequeathed money to help establish the institute.
Augusta Prep Board Chairman Thomas Burnside, who graduated from the school in 1984, says the faculty has for years had to endure "inferior facilities" that show their age.
"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 "To say they're outdated may be a bit of an understatement, so we as a board determined and decided that it was time for our facilities to catch up with our curriculum."
The school has raised $9.3 million from donors to pay for the building's complete construction. An additional $1.9 million is being raised to establish an endowment that will maintain the institute.
