AURORA—Rosary High School unveiled its new STEM wing Oct. 24 with a ribbon cutting by school and city officials.

 

Lindsay Cochrane, program director at the Dunham Fund, attended the ribbon cutting.

 

Representing Aurora were Mayor Richard C. Irvin and Deputy Mayor Chuck Nelson. 

 

The mayor presented the school with a certificate and praised the “women leaders” Rosary has educated and will educate in the future.

 

Calling the project “Our most exciting and transformative project to date,” Amy McMahon, head of school, said, “Rosary STEM classrooms will have a significant impact on multiple facets of the Rosary experience.”

 

Travis Ketterman, Rosary board chairman, gave a brief history lesson about 1962, then talked about changes in the decades since then. “The only thing that  hasn’t changed ... is Rosary’s science classrooms,” he said, eliciting laughter from the small audience.

 

With the gifts from the Dunham Fund and other donors, he added, “We have transformed 1960s classrooms into state-of-the-art, college worthy laboratories and science rooms.”

 

The Dunham Fund awarded Rosary a $250,000 matching grant for the Rosary Women in STEM Campaign. The campaign raised nearly $1 million.

 

The renovations at the all-girls school run by Springfield Dominicans in Aurora were made to serve the needs of the students and to attract new students interested in science, technology, engineering and math careers. 

 

The Oct. 24 event was an open house and reception for major donors, as well as ribbon cuttings for the wing and for the named classrooms:

 

â–º STEM wing named for the Dunham Foundation;

 

â–º Physics lab for Agnes Lochmann; 

 

â–º Chemistry lab for Lori and Jay Bergman. Lori is a 1978 Rosary graduate and former board member; 

 

â–º Biology lab for the Dominican Sisters of Springfield who operate the school. 

 

After the riboon cuttings and speeches, a reception  and individual tours of the new wing were led by members of Rosary’s Student Ambassador Leadership Team. Masks were worn and social distancing observed.

 

— Watch the opening ceremony at https://youtu.be/BecaFFn2odM

— Al Benson and Vicki Danklefsen contributed to this story