Claremont McKenna College held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 26 for their newly opened Robert Day Science Center. CMC’s faculty, alumni, donors, students and the broader 5C community gathered to celebrate its opening by listening to speeches, participating in tours and activities, and watching the official ribbon cutting.
The grand opening of the center lasted the entire afternoon, with events planned from 1 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. Throughout the day, visitors to the center could attend faculty-led tours, learn about the center’s art installations and even participate in a scavenger hunt.
Associate Vice President for Strategic Communication at CMC Alex Boekelheid said the ribbon cutting was a thank you to everyone who helped make the center become a reality.
“There’s a huge amount of gratitude flowing to the building today,” Boekelheid said. “It’s been a labor of love for a very long time, and a vision for longer than that, and the fact that this community came together to realize that vision and deliver on that labor of love, I think is just really something to celebrate.”
Attendees of the grand opening had the opportunity to hear from speakers such as CMC President Hiram Chodosh, members of the Keck Integrated Sciences Department and the center’s architects. According to Founding Chair for the Integrated Sciences Ran Libeskind-Hadas, the goals of the center focus on four main areas; fostering collaborative spaces, examining the relationship between science and society, the removal of traditional scientific “divisions” through a focus on integrated sciences and focus on experimental and observational “computational methods.”
“ The goals of the center focus on four main areas; fostering collaborative spaces, examining the relationship between science and society, the removal of traditional scientific ‘divisions’ through a focus on integrated sciences and focus on experimental and observational ‘computational methods.’ ”
The building will house CMC’s Codes of Life classes, a first-year class requirement at CMC launched in 2023. The Codes of Life curriculum reflects CMC’s new integrated sciences program, a new multidisciplinary approach that the school implemented last year. STEM students no longer choose a particular field to major in, like chemistry or biology; beginning in fall 2024, incoming freshmen could only choose the “Integrated Sciences” major.
In his speech, Chodosh spoke to the vision behind the center, and thanked past and future students.
“It’s not just a building, it’s a magnetic field of knowledge, ideas and people coming together,” Chodosh said. “We dedicate this center to each and every one of you here, to the broader members of our outstanding crown colleges and the broad community and the small businesses who will be nourishing us here tonight, and so many others, our civic leaders … who are our partners in this global experiment.”
Bjarke Ingel, the head architect on the project, described the center as a building that has no backside, and instead, 360-degree visibility that captures and frames views from the campuses. Ingel said the center aimed to cultivate conversation and collaboration.
“The in-between space means that even if you are working in a lab or spending time in a classroom, you will always have this space where you can see even more exciting things happening on another level,” Ingel said. “And this might encourage you to sort of walk up beyond your curriculum and actually start conversations.”
Boekelheid said the social staircase on the first floor serves to create a space where people can come together, meet and share ideas.
“It’s becoming a bit of a crossroads for the college in that way, so it’s just a really fantastic space,” he said.
According to Boekelheid, the center’s layout aids CMC’s new approach to education in the sciences.
“There is a new way of thinking about how we teach the sciences here that is multidisciplinary that crosses boundaries, that traditionally exists,” Boekelheid said. “And that really tries to open new doors for students and for the future to be able to have some new knowledge come here.”
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