The Tull Charitable Foundation awarded $600,000 to Oglethorpe University for the I.W. “Ike” Cousins Center for Science and Innovation.
Designed to elevate students’ intellectual curiosity and facilitate engaged teaching and active education, the Cousins Center for Science and Innovation will bring the liberal arts and sciences to life in an inclusive, collaborative and innovative way with a multidisciplinary approach to learning. Oglethorpe will break ground in May 2018, and the Center is scheduled to open in 2019.
“I believe it is at the intersection of science and business—which collectively touches at least 70 percent of the university’s students—where the challenges of society lie,” said Lawrence M. Schall, president of Oglethorpe University. “The Cousins Center for Science and Innovation will provide learning spaces for interactive study and idea sharing across disciplines, with specific emphasis on science and business. We are grateful to the Tull Foundation for their support and investment in OU education.”Schall says the Cousins Center for Science and Innovation will change what and how Oglethorpe teaches. By creating learning spaces that align with our educational vision, Oglethorpe will demonstrate its dedication to a new model of the liberal arts and sciences, one in which theory and practice are connected in and across every discipline.
The design of the new center will encourage this cross-disciplinary approach to education. The facility, a renovation and expansion of the current Goslin Hall science building, will feature classrooms and separate specialty labs for biology, chemistry, and physics, as well as independent study labs for honors projects and joint student-faculty research.
Such spaces, and such interaction, will enhance Oglethorpe’s ability to graduate students with the experiences and the skills to prosper in the 21st century workplace and be of service to the Atlanta community and the world beyond.
“Beyond our campus, the Cousins Center for Science and Innovation has the potential to change our city,” said Tim Tassopoulos ’81, chair of the Oglethorpe Board of Trustees and president and COO of Chick-fil-A. “Sixty percent of OU students come from the greater metropolitan Atlanta area, and more than 60 percent of our 13,000 alumni reside here. When we graduate entrepreneurial thinkers and community builders, the likelihood is high that Atlanta is where they will stay, contribute, and make a difference. This investment in Oglethorpe by the Tull Charitable Foundation is truly an investment in Atlanta.”
