MAYHEW, Miss. (AP) - East Mississippi Community College will break ground June 6 on a new student union on its Mayhew campus.
The new building will provide additional classrooms and serve as an anchor for student services.
The project will cost about $17 million. It is being funded with school capital improvement funds and bonds. It is scheduled to open in 2016.
In addition to 12 new classrooms, a 100-seat lecture hall and a 100-station computer lab.
By moving offices and services into the new building, the community college intends to reconfigure its current buildings and expand educational offerings. It also hopes to provide on-campus living spaces by 2018.
“For example, in the math and sciences building, we’ll relocate some of those classrooms and turn those older rooms into more laboratories,” school vice president Paul Miller told The Commercial Dispatch (https://bit.ly/RU2fot ).
“We’ve been stymied on how many lab sections we can offer at any one time. Moving those classes and then converting those rooms will allow more sections to open up,” he said.
Miller said the project has been in the works for about two years.
School leaders expect the school’s enrollment to spike in the coming years as workforce training initiatives gear up for Yokohama Tire Corporation’s employment needs. The company has made a 500-job commitment in Clay County, but additional phases could increase employment to 2,000.
The school is also exploring a “two plus two plus two” program to give high school students college credits and exposure to its advanced manufacturing technology program. The program helps with skills needed to either enter the workforce after two years or the ability to transfer to Mississippi State University’s school of engineering.
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Information from: The Commercial Dispatch, https://www.cdispatch.com
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