Faculty, guests, project participants and the community joined to attend the ribbon cutting dedication ceremony of University High School of Science and Engineering (UHSSE). The 85,000 s/f building, designed by JCJ Architecture, became the educational home to 400 students when it officially opened for the 2009-2010 school year on August 31. Diggs Construction, LLC was the program manager and The Pike Company of Rochester, N.Y. was the construction manager for the $41.6 million UHSSE project.
Walter Harrison, president of University of Hartford, and Eric Rice, principal of UHSSE, welcomed attendants. Further remarks were given by president of UHSSE National Honor Society, U.S senator of CT Joseph Lieberman; mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford; superintendent of Hartford Secondary Schools Joan Massey chair of Hartford board of education Ada Miranda; and UHSSE senior class president Tim Nicholson.
UHSSE has a collegiate design and theme to encourage students to pursue higher education and study all fields related to science, engineering, and technology.
The school is part of the city's improvement plan to raise the bar academically for all 24,000 students. The atmosphere and program of UHSSE meshes the high school experience with college expectations. A major benefit that was produced through the partnership of University of Hartford and Hartford Public Schools is that qualified students can take college courses at the University of Hartford.
Brief tours of the new school were offered at the completion of the ceremony. Many attendants took the opportunity to walk though the school's concourse and special engineering and science labs that are designed more around a collegiate design rather than the traditional high school lab setting. Classrooms, exhibit and lecture spaces and the gymnasium were also highlighted during the tour.