AUCA Breaks Ground

October 19, 2011

On October 14^th, 2011, at 17:52, President Wachtel laid the ceremonial first brick of the AUCA Campus.  The meaning of this event was twofold.  First, it began the final chapter of AUCA’s history at its current campus on the Old Square.  Second, it reaffirmed AUCA’s commitment to being not only the best university in Central Asia, but also one of the best in the world.

AUCA currently exists in a space too small by half.  Students learn in classrooms that stunt innovation, sitting behind desks that stunt physical growth.  For over 10 years now, the AUCA community has expanded its liberal arts mission despite having the same limited space.  We cannot keep asking our students, faculty and staff to do more with less.  In reality, people only do less with less.

At a little over 16,000 square meters, the new campus will more than double the size of AUCA.  Students will be able to learn in classrooms that are flexible to the subject being taught and have more freedom to outfit the building to their needs.  Full-time faculty will enjoy personal workspaces and classrooms equipped with better technology.  Finally, the entire AUCA community will benefit from having a comfortable, welcoming place to gather and share ideas.

As current AUCA students, some of you may never get to be a student at the new campus, but that does not make your contribution to this effort any less meaningful.  Each student who has graduated from AUCA has been a part of laying the foundation for the new campus.  The same is true for all faculty and staff who have worked to share and grow their knowledge at AUCA.

To represent this effort, AUCA has created the AUCA Foundation Wall.  The wall is made up of individual bricks, each displaying the personal message of its owner.  These individual bricks will come together in the forum of the new campus to make a wall that will represent all of the individual steps that it took to make this collective dream of a new campus real. 

I encourage all students and faculty to get a brick.  It is a chance to have your name on the new campus forever.  More importantly, it is a chance to show everybody that walks through the doors of the new campus the incalculable amount of blood, sweat and tears that each one of us gave to build this dream in Bishkek.

Sven Stafford

Bricks can be purchased in the PR Office, or at www.auca.kg/en/brick

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