Four Times as Fabulous

After decades of scrounging for space on and off campus, Education is relocating to a new, state-of-the-art facility near William and Mary Hall.

Thanks to $38 million from the Virginia General Assembly, the new building will be a place where roughly 90 faculty and staff as well as 150 undergraduate and 650 graduate students can hang out and spread out. Construction begins this summer and by the 2010 academic year, the School of Education will be settling into its roomy, 112,000-square-foot facility.

Every year, the School of Education graduates more than 120 teachers and 20 school administrators along with reading specialists, school counselors and psychologists. Led by Dean Virginia McLaughlin, the school also offers professional development to over 20,000 educators across the state. A recent study revealed that the nationally ranked School of Education needs at least 100,000 square foot of space to do what it does.  We threw in the extra 12,000 as a bonus.

The new facility will bring new life to the School of Education. All programs, classrooms and offices will be under one roof with room to grow. The school’s physical footprint will give way to an even larger virtual footprint as outreach programs expand. The school will finally have a facility to equal the remarkable work and accomplishments of its dedicated faculty, staff and students.

“William and Mary’s School of Education has been doing absolutely marvelous work for years and years,” President Taylor Reveley said during a spring celebration of the future building. Reveley noted that marvelous work has come while the school was “stuffed” in just 26,000 square feet at Jones Hall. “Liberation from space constraints is on the way,” he said. “This is indeed a glorious moment.”