SCHOOL BREAKS GROUND ON STRUCTURE; MATH-SCIENCE BUILDING TO HAVE HIGH-TECH COMPUTER LINK-UPS.Byline: Gloria Gonzales Daily News Staff Writer Floyd Martin shoved his spade SPADE - Specification Processing And Dependency Extraction. Specification language. G.S. Boddy, ICL Mainframes Div, FLAG/UD/3DR.003 into the dry ground just above the quad Friday and came one shovelful shov·el·ful n. The amount that a shovel can hold. Noun 1. shovelful - the quantity a shovel can hold spadeful, shovel containerful - the quantity that a container will hold closer to the culmination of a 30-year plan. ``This building was taken out of the plans 30 years ago,'' said Martin, dean of the Math-Science Division at Moorpark College Moorpark College is a California-state funded community college located on a 134 acre (542,000 m²) property reclining on a hill in Moorpark, a town in Ventura County, California. . ``But now we're finally building it to fit the mission of the community college, to offer classes for two-year transfer students, professionals seeking additional training and students learning careers.'' Martin addressed faculty, trustees and administrators gathered to break ground for the 30-year-old campus' second math-science building, one that was part of the college's original design. Construction of the building was delayed in part because trustees believed in 1967 that Moorpark College was too rural to attract large numbers of students, Martin said. Today, Moorpark College has the largest enrollment of the Ventura County Community College District's three campuses. About 12,000 students attend the college each year, with thousands enrolling in math, science and computer science classes. The new, 27,000-square-foot, $5 million building should be completed in about 18 months and be ready for classes in the spring of 1999, Martin said. ``There won't be a tablet-armed desk in the whole building,'' Martin said when describing the building plans last week. ``Every workstation, every faculty office, every lab station will have a hook-up to the building's computer network and eventually to the Internet. Students will be able to walk in with their laptops and plug them in. ``Laptops are to students today what calculators were to students a generation ago. When this building was first planned, we still carried around slide rules. Now it's smaller and smaller computers.'' The building is designed around computer technology, with a 6-inch raised floor to accommodate yards and yards of fiber-optic cable, a file-server room, a systems administrator's office, and matching computer and math labs, all with laptop ports. Instructors will pontificate from lecterns hooked up to digital projection systems that will allow them to project data from disks onto the screen. The building will house the mathematics, biology, anthropology and computer science labs and faculty offices. It includes a special ``clean room'' prep area for a microbiology microbiology: see biology. microbiology Scientific study of microorganisms, a diverse group of simple life-forms including protozoans, algae, molds, bacteria, and viruses. lab. ``Microbiology students work with bacteria and microbes that have to be kept separate. The other labs share a prep space,'' Martin added. Martin and other faculty noted that though the new building is much needed, the demand for class space in math and science will still outstrip out·strip tr.v. out·stripped, out·strip·ping, out·strips 1. To leave behind; outrun. 2. To exceed or surpass: "Material development outstripped human development" supply. ``This really just puts a dent in it: We'll still be teaching calculus calculus, branch of mathematics that studies continuously changing quantities. The calculus is characterized by the use of infinite processes, involving passage to a limit—the notion of tending toward, or approaching, an ultimate value. in trailers,'' Martin said. The new structure will match the 1960s cinder cin·der n. 1. a. A burned or partly burned substance, such as coal, that is not reduced to ashes but is incapable of further combustion. b. A partly charred substance that can burn further but without flame. block-style of the original science building, and a breezeway breeze·way n. A roofed, open-sided passageway connecting two structures, such as a house and a garage. will unite the two. The new building will fill the last grassy grass·y adj. grass·i·er, grass·i·est 1. Covered with or abounding in grass. 2. Resembling or suggestive of grass, as in color or odor. Adj. 1. space north of the quad, between the science building and the student services building. ``It's the piece that's missing,'' Martin said. ``It's the last piece that fills it in and completes the quad.'' CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: Floyd Martin, a dean at Moorpark College, is ready to see ground broken for the school's new math new math n. Mathematics taught in elementary and secondary schools that constructs mathematical relationships from set theory. Also called new mathematics. and science building. Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News |
|
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion