MICDS to Build New Science, Math Center With Generous $21.5-Million Gift

In a couple of years, the sky is the limit for science and mathematics students at Mary Institute and Country Day School (MICDS). Soon, laboratories will be open for plant-life science projects, collaborative laboratories and robotics projects, among others.

At an outdoor press conference, school officials proudly announced the awarding of a $21.5 million donation, the largest in the school’s history, to build a combined science and mathematics center on the upper school campus.

The gift from the JSM Charitable Trust and the James. S. McDonnell III and Elizabeth Hall McDonnell family makes this possible. McDonnell donated $5 million in 1996 to build the school’s on-campus athletic center.

The McDonnell’s gift is the largest single donation in MICDS’s 152-year history.

“We have been fortunate to be involved in the life of the school as students, alumni, parents and grandparents,” said McDonnell, who attended Country Day School when it was located in North County on Brown Road.

Lisa Lyle, MICDS’s Head of School, was appreciative of the gift.

“We are deeply grateful to the McDonnell's for their continued support of our school," she said. “The remarkable gift will allow us to offer engaging, hands-on application based coursework in science, technology, engineers and mathematics, as well as significant research projects in these disciplines.”

Facilities on campus will also be available to outside scientists in the community. Many of the classes in math and science will be co-mingled as one teaching discipline.

The new facility enhances MICDS’s curriculum and helps the school meet new, national science standards.

Members of the science and math faculties have made prior visits to new science centers in St. Louis County at both Clayton and Kirkwood high schools and visited several top rated new centers across the country.

“We may not be the finest new center in the country, but we will definitely be in the top two to three,” said James Childress of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, the firm that will design the buiding. He was ecstatic to be associated with such a transformational new concept in education, he said.

Planners estimate it will take upwards of one year to get permits from the City of Ladue, prepare the site, dig a foundation and get the project underway.

The 52,000-square-foot facility will feature science and math rooms deliberately mixed together, including 1,200 square foot “clabs”—spaces that combine traditional space with laboratories conducive to  hands-on learning. The facility's classrooms will be 30 percent larger than those found in the typical high schools.

Tally Portnoi and Suyash Raj, student members of the planning committee, might not be around when the ribbon is cut and students rush into their new world-class facility. But their legacy of embracing a love of science and math will surely live on.