A second “Green” parking garage

For those of your taking the shady grove road entrance, you must have encounter this ominous looking building bearing down at you as you make your commute to campus.  Heck, just a couple of months ago that area was all trees.  This structure is the beginning of our expansion plans to add yet another academic complex to our campus. From three buildings to four, the addition of the 220,000-square-foot Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Education Facility will not only serve an additional several thousand students more, but add other academic programs in the STEMM fields.

If you look at the history of the Universities at Shady Grove you will see how the campus has served our partners in business, government, healthcare and education of the Montgomery County region with the workforce needs of today and tomorrow. Its through this collaboration that the campus has grown to what it is today, offering over 80 academic programs to over 4,000 students.  The mission at USG is both to enrich its citizens with knowledge and to provide the region with the best prepared workforce possible.  Trust me, this works to our advantage because every degree has a direct application for the jobs offered in our area, and will set us up for a successful and rewarding careers after graduation.

The ground has been broken, the new green garage will provide another 700 parking spots at a cost of around $20 million.  It is simply the first step in the process, in the next two years we will see the beginning of construction on the building housing these additional programs in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medical science (STEMM).  The building will be ultra high-tech, featuring state-of-the-art laboratories, active learning classrooms, clinical training facilities. academic offices, and will most likely see our office of student services currently located in building three moved to the new building four, which will happen as soon as the Fall of 2018 when construction is completed.

To think when I return to my little campus in Rockville, MD in twenty years it might be a sprawling complex of many building, totally unrecognizable. With the rate we have been growing I can almost guarantee it.