A student passes by Seacobeck Hall, which is under construction as the new home of UMW’s College of Education and slated for completion early next year. Photo by Suzanne Carr Rossi.
Barbara Bishop Mann ’66 remembers making peanut butter and jelly crackers on linen-clad tables. Gayle Petro ’79 pumped pink frozen yogurt from a newfangled machine. Susan Doig ’91, M.Ed. ’06, and friends got creative, making potato skins by topping tubers with salad bar staples and cranking them through a grill-type toaster.
“A lot of bonding happened in this building,” said Doig, one of several alums who studied education at Mary Washington and returned this month to their old dining hall. They came back to add their names to a beam – also signed by COE students, faculty and staff – to be hoisted onto the roof of Seacobeck, the decades-long campus hub for generations of students.
Since meal service moved to the University Center in 2015, a $24 million renovation – in starts and stops – has brought Seacobeck full circle. Its planned re-opening early next year as the new home of the recently accredited College of Education (COE) will reflect UMW’s roots as a school for teachers, with a nod to the future of academia.
The state-of-the-art facilities will be “transformational” for students, said COE Dean Pete Kelly. Read more.