Waterbury, Conn. -January’s All-College Meeting traditionally welcomes back faculty and students and sets a vision for the upcoming semester. This year, that vision extended to 2017: the projected completion date for the Founders Hall renovation and campus wide site improvements projects – two initiatives that promise to significantly improve the campus’s aesthetic and functional appeal for future classes of students.

Several renderings of the future Center for Health Sciences were revealed to faculty and staff during a PowerPoint presentation by Moser Pilon Nelson Architects and Macchi Engineers. Joel Baronowski from the Conn. Department of Construction Services was also on-hand to answer questions as the project manager for both projects.

For attendees, the presentation gave life to what promises to be a much improved learning and gathering space in Founders Hall. The building will be completely gutted and refitted to enable all of the College’s credit and non-credit allied health programs to be taught beneath one roof. The space will also include open common space for casual study, a café, a tiered-seating lecture hall, numerous classrooms and labs, faculty offices and a multipurpose room that can be sectioned off or left open to accommodate up to 320 guests for larger events.

Current partnerships with WestConn and UConn allied health programs will continue in the new building. Bridge to College, non-credit and StarBase offices and classrooms that currently utilize Founders Hall will be relocated to other buildings on campus.

“The renovation of Founders Hall, a building with so much history and beloved by many of our founding faculty and alumni, is a powerful event,” said NVCC President Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Ph.D. “The proposed project will have the entrance of our new Center for Health Sciences face the rest of the campus, providing an anchor and a sense of powerful completion.”   

Tying neatly into the renovation is the concurrent campus wide improvements project, which includes a direct connection from Founders Hall to Technology Hall via a beautified, raised boulevard through the buildings’ shared parking lots.

“Students will also have sidewalks to get around campus and to Chase Parkway and more strategically placed bus stops, further improving access,” explained Provost and Senior Dean of Administration Jim Troup at the meeting. The project also features new exterior lighting and pending adequate funding, a first installment of blue phones around campus for reporting emergencies.

Other items of note included spring enrollment, nursing pass rates, manufacturing completion rates, PA-1240, graduation rates, a Fulbright Scholar update, the Danbury relocation project and evening bus service. Read about these and more in the President’s full remarks.