Edward St. John donates $10 million to University of Maryland for new building
Edward St. John, a Baltimore developer, announced that he will donate $10 million to the University of Maryland to build a high-tech classroom building on the university's College Park campus, according to the Baltimore Sun. St. John, who graduated from UM in 1961, adds his funds to a pool that will include state funding. The total cost of the complex is expected to be $63 million.
The new classrooms will give students a modernized post-secondary educational experience and access to an interactive whiteboard, document camera and HDMI projector, for example. These devices shift the educational paradigm, encouraging collaboration, officials at the school note.
"Instruction as we've known it for the last 20 or 30 years will be different with this building," said university president Wallace Loh. "It's going to be technology-rich, it's going to be interactive, and students will learn in teams."
The new building will largely serve freshman and sophomores and will feature classrooms that organize students in small teams and include numerous computer screens that link students in large classes to the professor. Larger lecture halls will also include state-of-the-art computer technology.
