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Monmouth College Celebrates Construction Milestone
The bag-pipes, the drums, the beam--- it was the final piece to finishing the structural construction of Monmouth College's Center for Science and Business.

Students, alumni, and employees huddled to the east of the $40-million dollar building Thursday afternoon, all eyes glued to the last beam being guided to the top by a crane.

As he watched, Monmouth College President Mauri Ditzler couldn't help but acknowledge the advancements made in engineering through the decades. He tells WGIL the excitement to the construction process now factored into the "Topping Off" Ceremony.

"It was almost like putting a big erector set together and everyday people come in and say how many girders go into place today, thirty or forty, and how has the building changed," Ditzler says of past construction methods. "So at some point we said wouldn't it be fun if we all got together and watched the last one go into place."

"If you look at it you can see that hundreds, maybe thousands of students, employees and prospective students have signed that beam over the last few months in anticipation of that beam going into place.

The ceremony actually traces all the way back to ancient Scandinavian religious practices, when a tree would be placed atop a new structure to please the fallen spirits.

The 136,000 square-foot facility is expected to be completed in the fall of 2013.




(WGIL Photos and News Story by Kyle Schassburger).
04 26 12 by Newsroom
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