I will interject a new Chronicle into the stream of older editions at this point.

Ingram Chronicle

Volume 7 Number 2

30 January 2009

We had an interesting event in Yuma on Thursday, with the dedication of the new Agriculture and Science Building along with the new "3C" (College Commons Center) building. I have a number of images of these rather startling structures.

The first is the "3C" building, from the area in front of the Sci-Ag building. This is a view along the west front of the Sci-Ag building. The Ceremonies were held in the area under the "3C" building, with a ribbon cutting after the several talks by the rather proud officials and contractors! I have a number of pieces of the ribbon that I was able to cut, alongside Professor Fred Croxen (Geology & Earth Sciences}. I had sat with Professor Sam Colton (Welding Tech) through the talks. It was rather interesting to see and talk to a number of the old staff, both faculty and support. There were several past members of the AWC District Governing Boards present also. I was the principal contributer to the design of the old Chemistry building, years ago. We had been assured that there would be a new Science building "soon" but it has taken many years to see this building rise from the desert and gleam in the sun with its stainless steel exterior and many "green" features, such as solar panels for power production and the reflective skin to reduce thermal heating from the sun!

This next is a view of the south side of the Sci-Ag building along the new, larger parking lot between the campus and 24th Street.

The "skin" of the building is quite bright and shiny, with the large array of shiny metal covering the structure. I will have to see about getting some interior views of the classrooms and laboratories for Geology, Chemistry, Physics, and Astronomy. They do have a wide array of highly sophisticated electronic audio-visual, still- and motion-picture systems and computer arrays available to the instructors. I don't think that my teaching methods would be adequate to this new system!

The general contractor was Pilkington Construction of Yuma, and almost all of the sub-contractors, electrical, HVAC, concrete, steel, etc., were local as well. This is the major part of the $70 million bond issue of 2004, with additional structures in Wellton, San Luis, Quartzite, and Parker. I feel that the construction appears to be outstanding, state-of-the-art for 2009!

The NAU-Yuma has also added another building next to the new Sci-Ag one, for their Science courses. A new Kathy Watson Child Development Education Center has also been added recently, so the old small close-quartered campus has really expanded far beyond the old clustered buildings. Such is change!