Today the staff and students of SJC High School celebrated another milestone. Since 1981 both the high school and junior college have been sharing laboratories and over time it's become a headache. But now, finally a facility has been developed that gives both sides room to grow and to experiment. SJC Provost Dianne Lindo took us on a tour.
Dianne Lindo, SJC Provost
"We have had a good programme for years, we have had excellent faculty but we have not had appropriate facilities for our students so what this means is that finally we are bale to move to a new area of excellence in our programme here."
Jacqueline Godwin, 7NEWS
And beginning next week I understand that just over six hundred students will benefit from this new lab?
Dianne Lindo,
"Yes. These labs will provide facilities for our high school, we have four specialized labs, one for Physics, one for Biology, one for chemistry and one for Integrated Science. So all the students in the high school, Science Majors and Non Science Majors will have the use of this facility. This facility
will also be opened to students from extension. As you know our downtown location does not have a lab but they do teach Integrated Science. So this will allow our students from the extension to have exposure to proper lab practices and they will be able to come up here and do some work here."
Jacqueline Godwin,
How was this made possible?
Dianne Lindo,
"This was made possible through hard work, significant investment, lots of patience on behalf of our faculty who had to be having classes all over the place. At some point there were even science classes held in our audio/visual room in order to allow time for this building to be refurbished."
Jacqueline Godwin,
What about the money?
Dianne Lindo,
"Money came from the college which meant that there are many other divisions that have not had attention for a little while in order to have this made."
The new science labs cost just under five hundred thousand dollars. Students at Rockhurst High School in Kansas, Missouri in the United States donated part of the proceeds. Meanwhile plans are already under way to try and raise another half a million dollars that will be used to construct a new science building for the junior college.
