 Founded in 1980, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics is building its second campus due to open in Mordenton in 2021. Let's follow project manager Kevin Baxter and his team as they survey the site, engage the community, and dream about new possibilities for this innovative model of STEM education. We opened our doors in 1980 and at that time we're the first school of this kind in the country and in the world even, which was a publicly funded residential high school focused on STEM. North Carolina was transitioning from that time from being an agriculture and textile base primarily to more knowledge base, you know the research triangle park was up and coming and so the goal was to think about how to make sure we have the talent in the state to grow those industries as the state developed further and so one of the strategies was to provide this opportunity for students all over North Carolina and so we bring students in from all 13 congressional districts are involved in enrollment and so that started in 1980 and we opened the doors of 150 students in the junior class and added 150 the next year and this year we enroll 680 juniors and seniors in our residential program. Right off the top the most exciting thing to me is that we're going to serve 300 more students. We've hit capacity in Durham for many years now for about seven years we've not been able to go beyond the capacity we were the ceiling we reached with our student body and so 300 more students a year beginning in 2021 are going to have a residential experience. We spoke with vice chancellor for student life Terry Lynch about the unique opportunities that come with building a new campus. And then for me being able to have sort of like a blank slate to create different structures different systems and use the knowledge of what we do on the Durham campus but perhaps do it slightly differently for the Morganton campus and that could be you know the layout of a residence hall having more lounge spaces for the students to sort of gather the dining amenities for the students the opportunity to engage with the Morganton community. Those are real sort of neat opportunities that because we're building a new campus it gives you the opportunity to sort of think and be creative versus sort of doing the same things over and over again. A lot of times as an administrator you may be able to build a new building or build a new sort of suite there's very few times where you're actually building a new campus and opening a new campus and so that's really exciting. But we also see a tremendous opportunity to really build out an entirely new type of pilot learning experience which could become a pilot that maybe finds his way back to Durham as well where students get into the real world into advanced manufacturing settings and renewable energy development settings and sustainable agriculture settings and all these different types of experiences where they can work alongside professionals in the field. It's really a tremendous opportunity to expand the mission of the school to serve more students across North Carolina and take advantage of the resources and opportunities that present themselves in that part of the state. Well the most exciting thing for me is the opportunity that I think it's going to bring to all of Western North Carolina. Obviously a great opportunity for Morganton of which I'm quite passionate about. I think about this is the hub and all the different educational opportunities that can happen. I think it changes the game in Western North Carolina for the value of education and the ability to increase the educational attainment in all of North Carolina, especially Western North Carolina. And Sally Sandy isn't the only one excited about the unique setting of Western North Carolina. The campus is going to be very different. I mean it's going to be a little over three times the size in terms of the actual footprint of the campus and it's going to have a much more green space than the Durham campus does and so that may impact our ability to do some things differently with the curriculum around environmental sciences for example. Given that School of Science and Maths was the first of its type and now we have the opportunity with the UNC school system to develop that next university system, I would not be surprised that the other STEM organizations throughout the state, throughout the nation were looking at us and saying well how did you do this and can we copy that from you. And that's going to be a model that we believe is forward looking. It starts to respond to the interests of today's students and also the interests of industry. So the students that we're looking for, they're intellectually curious, they're entrepreneurial, they're innovative in their thought processes, they're critical thinkers and most importantly I think they are collaborative. They want to work with other students, they want to engage with faculty, they want to ask questions that have never been asked and answered before and that creates an environment that helps them to thrive as an individual but also as a community. I think when you really consider the mission of the school and you really look at the realization of the mission to not just be an experience for the individual students who come, go through the program and then move on but really the school's cumulative impact. I think when you look at the opportunity that we have through a second campus in Morganton to number one, increase the number of students who have the experience but also look at the opportunity that it creates for us to impact in a different setting in a different part of our, you know, great state, the extended opportunities that the school offices offers in terms of reaching out and partnering with local communities all across the state. I got excited because of the amount of independent business that's thriving in Morganton and the surrounding areas, the amount of corporate industry kind of presence that has over the last decade or so really established themselves throughout the Unifor region surrounding Burke County and within Burke County and so there's a lot of momentum in my mind in that part of the state. The need there is for someone to shine a spotlight on it. Grayson Cooper, an NCSSM alumnus, has served on the core planning team for the Western campus. So the notion that we can have more students across the state have access to those kinds of caliber of experience that are going to give them a jumpstart not only in terms of the content but in terms of like what they're really curious about and interested in is really exciting for me. We have tried to be as inclusive in our process as possible to maximize the inputs that affect the direction of the plan and so as we built out the educational program plan and simultaneously the master facility plan for the site what we've been doing is kind of collecting feedback that would direct or inform those plans. You know top of all that what you have is you have a team, that same team, Kevin Baxter's team, the Fright Institute and Duty Payne, you would think that they've been together for 20 years doing this but it's really been just six, seven or eight months. They are a partnership of a collaboration and they are working extremely well together. It's really impressive. We think that's a win-win. It's actually a win-win-win. It's a win for NCSSM. It's a win for the industries and it's a win for the state of North Carolina. So we're excited about that in particular.