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NVCC Expansion Remains on Trackby KRISTEN ARMSTRONG, Staff Writer
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| Contractors remain ahead of schedule
getting the newest academic building at Northern Virginia Community
College's Alexandria campus open by next summer. “We hopefully will be opening [by] fall '08,” NVCC spokesman Yolanda Barbier said. The 75,000 square-foot, four-story academic building will feature a student center, a 150-seat theater, science labs and 12 classrooms to accommodate the campus' growing number of students. The $23.4 million academic structure will be the first to built on the Alexandria campus in 26 years. Most of the funding for the facility came from the General Assembly, with private fund-raising augmenting tax dollars. The Alexandria campus is located on North Beauregard Street, about a quarter-mile south of Arlington. Enrollment at the Alexandria campus currently hovers around 10,800 for the fall semester, an increase from last year's enrollment figure, Barbier said. “Our campus needs space to support the access portion of our mission,” Alexandria campus provost Jonathan Gueverra said. The community college, he said, “is committed to student success, and physical space is a function of the equation [that] access can equal success.” Ground was broken for the academic building last November. During the ground-breaking ceremony, Arlington Superintendent Robert Smith said that nearly a quarter of students who use the Alexandria campus are graduates of Arlington's school system. For those interested in keeping track of the new building's progress, photos are posted weekly on the Web site at http://alexandriaphasethree.blogspot.com. |