Challenge grant, donations set stage for campus upgrades at Roanoke College

Roanoke College will be able to move forward with a series of campus upgrades thanks to donors and a sizeable challenge grant from a Richmond foundation.

The Cabell Foundation, named for Robert and Maude Cabell, awarded the local college a $250,000 grant with a challenge that the school raise an equal amount in matching gifts.

The college recently announced it had met that bar and will be able to refurbish a series of facilities for students.

The projects lined up include:

• Renovations to the education department that will bring in new equipment and create classrooms that “are aligned with the innovative learning that graduates will model” in their own future classrooms. Three teaching spaces will be outfitted with new education technology and furnishings.
• Modernizing the front lobby of the Bast Center. The refresh of the athletic facility will help create a closer aesthetic tie to the new Cregger Center that opened in 2016.
• Creating a Humanities Collaboration Center at the Fintel Library. The center will offer a flexible, multimedia classroom and lecture space for the college’s humanities programs. Technology upgrades and smaller zones to facilitate individual learning and small group activities will be included in the project.

A future project will also revamp the fitness and dance studio space at the Bast Center. The expanded space will help the college add more classes and keep up with student demand.  The renovation plans call for converting the building’s former fitness center, now located in Cregger, into three distinct group rooms that will include two fitness studios and one new dance studio complete with a springwood floor.  A portion of the challenge grant was earmarked for that work. Fundraising for the remainder of the budget is ongoing.

Roanoke College thanked its supporters for contributing to these campus improvements. In addition to the Cabell Foundation, donations were received from alumni, parents, board members and a campus staffer.

Gifts also were made by the Eugene M. Bane Charitable Foundation; Marietta McNeill Morgan and Samuel Tate Morgan, Jr. Trust; Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges; and the National Endowment for the Humanities.