W
hen class bells ring in the 201718 school year for State College Area High School students, they’ll be standing on the edge of a new era years in the making. Come January, they’ll walk through the doors of a glistening new building on Westerly Parkway and turn the corner toward the future. Sunlight will do most of the work to illuminate the building. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap around most of its body, so the school will feel a part of the landscape around it. Twenty-first century equipment in each of the four, three-story learning pods at the site of the old South Building will take students and teachers to new levels. At the same time, 42 - T&G August 2017
the central courtyard will let them get away from the 21st century when needed. A 100-person, highceilinged forum sits as the centerpiece, with a view out above the massive main entrance, over the street, and down to the North Building. The high school has “been growing, and growing, and growing as time goes along, but most of the original infrastructure dates back to the ’50s and ’60s,” says Ed Poprik, director of the physical plant for the State College Area School District. Poprik is playing a key role in the district’s $141 million project to build a new high school. The North Building on Westerly Parkway replaced the Fairmont Building as State
A rendering (top) offers an overall view of the new South Building complex planned for State High. The four learning pods in the front will open in January. A cut-out showing material in the walls of the new school sits outside a construction-site trailer.