BY: Aaron Plourde
With Lauren Everhart & Brock Winslow

Working alongside Baltimore-based Ayers Saint Gross and Durham firm Duda/Paine Architects, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) has established a master plan to optimize the NCSSM experience while simultaneously growing the residential and distance education programs.

The comprehensive plan, now shovel-ready, will come equipped with new classrooms, dorms, common areas and enhanced green spaces, all while honoring the architectural and historic integrity of the former Watts Hospital campus. Examples of the transformation include new and renovated dormitories, instructional spaces, and laboratories. A primary goal of the plan is to enhance student life with landscaped green spaces and a centrally located student center. Most importantly, the plan will enable hundreds more of the state’s best and brightest students to “accept the greater challenge” offered by the NCSSM opportunity.

What once was a city hospital will complete the transformation that began a generation ago. Finally, the facility will embody the spirit of the School molded by state leaders, students, faculty and staff during the past three decades.

A Brief History:
Watts Hospital, established in 1895 by George Watts, opened its doors on the corner of Club Boulevard and Broad Street in 1909, remaining there until it shut down in 1976. The hospital, along with Lincoln Hospital, served the city of Durham for nearly a century.

In the late 1970s, NCSSM was established by then-Governor Jim Hunt and the N.C. General Assembly as the first school of its kind, and Durham’s then-abandoned Watts Hospital campus became its home. When NCSSM welcomed its first class in the fall of 1980, there were many unknowns and uncertainties about the school’s future. But as each year passed and it became evident that the NCSSM educational experiment was working, the school began updating and retrofitting the campus to conform to the needs of students.

Major capital improvement projects such as the Charles Eilber Physical Education Complex (PEC), James B. Hunt, Jr. dormitory and John Friedrick Education Technology Complex (ETC), as well as renovations to the Bryan Center and Wyche House, now the Royall Center, have given NCSSM much-needed academic, athletic, residential and performance arts space. Rehabilitation efforts have helped preserve many of the buildings on the campus, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

A Plan Forward:
Over the past two years, NCSSM has worked with Ayers Saint Gross and Duda/Paine to complete a campus master plan that will increase its capacity to serve North Carolina’s best and brightest students. More than 1,400 students apply annually for roughly 330 spots in NCSSM’s residential program, and each year, hundreds of highly qualified, capable and eager students are turned away. With the creation of NCSSM Online last year, more of these students are now being served, but demand for admission continues to grow.

Now, the first phase of construction for the campus expansion is shovel-ready, but the school is awaiting capital improvement appropriations from the North Carolina General Assembly, which has already given the School $10 Million to develop the master plan. The hope is that, if funding is released, NCSSM will break ground on its first phase of the “Discovery Center” within a year.

So what will be included in the “Discovery Center” campus expansion? Residential capacity for more than 900 of North Carolina’s students; additional studio space that will allow for increased distance education efforts to reach more students through interactive videoconferencing and NCSSM Online; a privately supported, state-of-the-art fabrication lab created in honor of the Class of 1989’s Peter Haughton; a restructuring of the campus’s residential and academic space to create a cohesive living and learning center for the campus; and enhanced green space, including a quad, campus gardens, and outdoor teaching space. The new student center, planned on ground level, will be accessed from inside and outside and will be open to sunlight. The center is anticipated as the new hub of campus activity, serving as a space for dining services and collaborative study with access to a new library. Think Barnes & Noble meets NCSSM!

All of this while staying true to the history and architectural integrity that make the NCSSM campus what it is.

Moving forward, the state of the national and local economy will certainly factor into whether the School receives funding for the project for the next fiscal year. But with an improved fiscal outlook, NCSSM is ready and eager to begin construction on this exciting new expansion.