The new Saint Mary’s College Academic Building is a 65,000 SF building containing 17 classrooms and over ninety faculty and staff offices. The building has offices for fourteen academic departments and five institutes, including the Center for Academic Innovation and the Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership.

The offices and institutes are grouped into six office suites, designed to provide a professional work atmosphere that is welcoming to students and encouraging to interdisciplinary interaction among the faculty.

The building contains classrooms of various sizes and configurations, ranging from the large oval 60-person tiered classroom to small seminar-style classroom for eight to twelve students.

In addition to the offices and classrooms, the building provides specialized social science labs, numerous group study and conference rooms, a reflection room, and a cafe’ connected to an outdoor roof-top terrace. The heart of the building is a large two-story student commons that overlooks a large campus lawn. The south facing windows in the commons will allow sunlight to penetrate deep into the building interior.

The forms and materials used on the exterior of the building have been designed to compliment the existing architecture on the Saint Mary’s campus. Construction on the building began in the Spring of 2007 and was completed in time for classes in the Fall of 2008.

ADG was the executive architect for this project and was working in association with Ballinger Achitect of Philadelphia.