Berea College has added a state-of-the-art technology building to its 169-year-old Madison County campus.
The $24.2-million facility had been in the school’s capital plan for a decade and became reality after more than 500 alumni and friends donated $10 million. It hosted its first classes this summer and will be revving up to full speed as the fall semester progresses.
The new building provides room to innovate at the fast pace of the private sector and grow programs with cutting-edge laboratories, flexible classrooms, areas for interdisciplinary exploration and community gathering space. It has redundant broadband 10 gigabyte internet links from both the statewide Kentucky Wired network and Windstream, said Rich Dodd, director of project management for the school.
Berea College has always been progressive. It has built a national reputation as one of the top 20 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. and has not charged tuition to its students in more than 130 years. Its students all perform jobs on campus to help offset education costs.
Roughly 60 of its approximately 1,400 students will fulfill their labor obligation at the new technology building. If you have a Dell computer that required repair, there is a chance it was done by a Berea student. The strong partnership between the computer technology company and the college includes training students as Dell-certified technicians.
Beyond the modern hardware abilities, students develop their soft skills as they interact with Dell supervisors because they must justify why the repair they are about to perform—installing a new motherboard, for example—is needed in order to get the parts.
In addition to paying no cash tuition, every student is provided a top-grade Dell laptop to use for their education.
The new building, now formally known as the Computer Science, Digital Media and Information Technology Building, came about in response to ever-increasing numbers of students pursuing computer science programs. First introduced as a minor a decade ago, computer science is now Berea College’s top major and has 200 people in its Computer Science Alumni Advisory Group.
The board of trustees saw a need for more and better facilities than the Danforth Technology Building—built in 1958—could provide.
Modern technology is only part of the action taking place in the new facility, though. Faculty and staff have been moving into a new television studio, a new radio studio that is launching a low-power FM station, a theater production space, and a large maker-space laboratory.
Technology includes other physical elements, too, such as designing and working with ceramics, wood, automotive repair, welding, applied design and computer assisted design. The new building has space for all these.
Berea currently reports a 99% hiring rate for its computer science program graduates, 30% of whom are female (compared to 18% nationally). Among those hiring Berea graduates are Dell, of course, Apple, Amazon, Google, Hitachi, Oracle, Red Hat, Morgan Stanley, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Even five years ago, technology majors had an average starting salary of $53,889. ZipRecruiter now reports an average salary of $68,600 in Kentucky for individuals with a computer science degree. The job demand for those with computer and information technology training is expected to see 13% growth by 2028.
Starting technology jobs salaries across the spectrum run at about $60,000, which is twice the household income of most Berea students. The school expects graduates not only to be in-demand and workforce-ready but to create economic prosperity in their communities.
