The Masters School broke ground on Evans Greene Field in order to begin the construction of the new Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) building on campus. The building will be used by engineering students, providing them with more space and new surroundings on top of  Evans Greene Field Playing field. 

10th grader Teddy Meyer, a student who has attended Masters for 4 years, first got into engineering after joining the robotics club. 

“[The building is] old and decrepit, with no room, making it harder to work,” Meyer said.

He believes that even though the new building will potentially solve this problem, the construction of the building may disrupt the ability to work in classes due to noise issues and other distractions. 

10th grader, Konstantin Miebach has only been doing engineering for a year but he finds it hard to work in a small space. “It’s a small room and there isn’t much space to work if you’re building projects with a team,” Miebach said.

The one project the engineering class did, involving a catapult, couldn’t function as well as they had wished because the item being launched kept hitting the walls. Konstantin believes with a bigger space it would help the projects to work better.

Upper School engineering teacher John Chiodo has been working at Masters for 12 years; he began as a math teacher but transferred to the IEC six years ago. 

He said, “ There are going to be a lot of capabilities [of the IEC], and anyone will be able to use it. We will be able to make things on a larger scale.” He added, “We’re in borrowed space and it’s time for us to have a permanent home.” 

The project has been talked about for three years and they found it easier to build a new place than to renovate an old space. This being said the building funds and placement have sparked some disagreements among the Masters community.

10th grader, Xavier Rolston, chose to speak on behalf of those students. They described the situation as complicated, stating, “I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the new IEC building, for a couple of reasons.” Some of the reasons are, there are other things to focus on financially, like the flood damages that had been done to the lower level of the Fonseca Center and student financial aid.

That being said, among the community, it was also where the donation was coming from and what it was going towards. The building takes away the main playing field and has lots of money going towards it which has bothered other students.

Xavier believes that the Masters school could put money towards the IEC programming and improving it but doesn’t believe it needs a whole new building in general. In addition, the placement of the building isn’t the most ideal because it would be blocking the Hudson River view from campus. They said, “I definitely think it’s unfortunate because that was one of the beauties of Masters, the Hudson River scenery.”

The building will be used for any Masters student whether they are in the engineering program or not. The Engineering faculty is not positive about what the students can do with it when it’s finished, Mr. Chiodo, stated, “The biggest hurdle is letting people know about what they can do with it. It’s not just for IEC students, it’s designed for everybody.” 

Even though there are a lot of mixed feelings about this new building on campus it’ll be nice to see when it’s all finished and how the community gets to use it.