Learning Capacity
education, schools, technology,
Saint Mary’s Catholic School, the oldest Catholic school in Wyoming and the third ever built in the state, is continuing its more than 125 years of education in Cheyenne with the completion of a new high school.
The new facility is two-stories, 52,000 square feet and accommodates approximately 350 students from pre-K through eighth grade.
Attaining educational excellence at Saint Mary’s, a school already known for its academic rigor, will be enhanced by the new school building, says Saint Mary’s Principal Carol A. Ricken.
“The new school will add new life and flexibility to the educational experience at Saint Mary’s,” Ricken says. “The current building served us well for many, years but with the advent of technology and pre-kindergarten education, it has been more difficult to work around the old building.”
The school’s design will encourage different grades of students to learn together through the use of classroom pods that are designed around a Collaborative Learning Space. CLS provides spaces to give students across certain grade groupings a chance to do projects together.
“The classroom pods give a clear sense of community for each grade level,” Ricken says. “This type of space gives flexibility to meet the individual learning styles of all students.”
The school will also be equipped with wireless technology, interactive white boards, data/video projectors, a VoIP intercom with Sound Field Enhancement System and IP video stream. In addition, all students from grades three to eight will have their own personal laptops.
“At any given time the entire school could be utilizing the laptops as a learning tool,” Ricken says. “The computer truly becomes a learning tool to serve the student and the learning process.”
Numerous other community school projects have been in the works over the past couple of years in Cheyenne. In fact, all over the state of Wyoming, there has been a push to modernize and renovate schools. Over the next 10 years, the School Facilities Commission of the Wyoming State Legislature will put one-quarter of a billion dollars into school facilities in the state.
The Cheyenne community’s receipt of funds has been based primarily on capacity issues, which ultimately led to the building and remodeling of several schools, all of which are being equipped with new-age learning tools and state-of-the-art technology like those at the new Saint Mary’s school.
Best of all, the new schools provide a boost to the local economy. In addition to creating work in contracting and financing, the combination of building new schools and working on existing institutions will inevitably be a boon for the Cheyenne economy by attracting new residents.
Story by Brandon Lowe
Photo by Brian McCord
