WESTFORD – Nashoba Tech held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for an expansion to its academic space.
Dozens of alumni, faculty, town board members and those involved with the expansion project gathered to ceremoniously open the space on Aug. 22.
The process to add approximately 7,000 square feet of instructional space began with a grant award of $3,750,000 in December, with the project appearing before Westford’s Planning Board on Feb. 5. The award was granted to Nashoba Valley Technical High School from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through a “highly competitive application process.”
The expansion provides additional space for the robotics, engineering and programming and web development programs. The space is intended to increase opportunities for collaborative projects, integrated programming and state of the art equipment sharing. It will also improve and increase training capacity for adult retraining.
Nashoba Tech is a regional vocational school serving a number of towns including Ayer, Chelmsford, Groton, Littleton, Pepperell, Shirley, Townsend and Westford. Their partnership began in the 1960s, to come together to imagine and build a state of the art facility to train the future workers of the region.
Making the expansion possible
Construction of the expansion began in April. The new space consists of four major sections including an advanced manufacturing section, programming web development, theory room as well as robotics and engineering room.
“All of this expansion was possible through ideas and working together collaboratively,” Superintendent Denise Pigeon said during the event. “It is with great gratitude on behalf of our entire school community that we celebrate the opening of this new space today, and of the new equipment that also comes with this amazing grant.”
Dr. Russell Johnston, the Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, also attended the ceremony.
“We know the type of collaboration, the type of learning that spaces like this create for young people,” Johnston said, “It’s this idea of having these programs clustered together will create what we at DESE stand for which is interactive, real-world, and relevant work.”
The new space, equipment, and programs will prepare students to take on new and challenging assignments preparing them for future real world experiences in their careers.
Students can expect to use the space in the upcoming 2024 to 2025 school year.
