November 28, 2018
On the rise
How timely investments are forging a new student experience at AndoverThe Knowledge & Goodness campaign is ushering in the next bold evolution of the Andover campus, and the Academy’s upcoming building projects are designed with the growing needs of our community in mind.
Here, Tristin Batchelder Mannion ’82, P’19, trustee and building committee chair, discusses the importance of such campus enhancements, which began with the Sykes Wellness Center and continued with the Snyder Center this past winter.
Today three projects—the OWHL renovation, the Pan Athletic Center, and the new music facility—are either planned or underway, and each fulfills a distinct need.
Tristin Batchelder Mannion, trustee and building committee chair
How do today’s campus projects advance Andover’s vision for the future?
Whether in the academic or athletic realm, our building plans include flexible and multipurpose spaces to directly address Andover’s commitment to the student experience. Each project design considers the core priorities of the Academy’s Strategic Plan and supports programs to promote inclusion, interdisciplinary collaboration, and interaction. In this way, all campus projects play a critical role in supporting connected learning and personal well-being.
Why is now the right time to move these projects forward?
Actually, this work is overdue. The identified projects are urgent because they address outdated, intensively utilized spaces that were built in another era and that cannot adequately support current programmatic needs. Athletics facilities constructed mostly in the 1950s and before, designed for a 600-student boys’ school, do not satisfy the needs of our vibrant coed varsity, JV, intramural, and life-sports programs of today. Music instruction in the basement of a former science building is makeshift at best, and the last OWHL renovation occurred before the Internet was invented. The right time to address these issues for our students and the future is most certainly now.
While preserving heritage spaces, the OWHL renovation will create adaptable classrooms, an integrated Tang Institute, and a makerspace or “Nest” that is twice the current size. The project is currently underway, with the new-look OWHL scheduled to greet students for fall term 2019.
To be located near the Snyder Center, the new Pan Athletic Center will house a swimming and diving complex, dance studios, wrestling facilities, and the Athletics Hall of Honor.
A planned 30,000-square-foot music facility will serve the more than 700 students who participate in such programming annually and will become the prominent western anchor of a newly defined “cultural corridor” on campus.
Categories: Philanthropy
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