By Sebastian Juarez
Staff Writer
California State University, Dominguez Hills’ new Science and Innovation Building is on track to be in full operation in spring, 2020.
The $82 million construction project broke ground in Oct. 2017. Thus far, the project is coming along and is on track to wrap up by the end of the 2019 fall semester, said Roshni Thomas, CSUDH director of planning, design and construction.
Thomas oversees the project and has been a part of the process from the beginning. She says that requests for renovations to the science department were being sent to the chancellor’s office for years, but were finally approved with support from CSUDH President Willie Hagan and California State University Chancellor Timothy White.
The construction company handling the oversight of the project is C.W. Driver. Its staff helps find ways to save money, as well as hires the teams that execute the plan and construct the building. C.W. Driver has done an efficient job of budgeting and is on track to stay within the $82 million target, Thomas said.
The current science building was built in the 1970s, but due to its outdated facilities and equipment, it “doesn’t help the science program achieve what it should,” Thomas said.
The motivation for the project came from the need to modernize and update the university’s science laboratories. Thomas says that facilities like these require construction in order to upgrade, rather than technological updates. That’s why the science department was first in line to get a facelift of this magnitude.
Toyota gave CSUDH a $750,000 grant to construct mobile “Fab Labs,” as well as $4 million to help build the new building. In addition, an area within the building will be called the Toyota Center of Excellence, which plans to encourage collaborative, hands-on work among CSUDH students, CSUDH STEM K-12 students and educators alike.
The Science and Innovation Building should be open and fully operational by the start of the 2020 spring semester, giving CSUDH students access to new technology and workspaces that are advanced and up to speed with the rest of the CSUs.
“Those spaces do more for people,” said Thomas. “Not just the learning process, but also the discovery process and maybe the innovation process.”
