Notre Dame High School has a new look.
The private all-girls high school, located in Lemay at 1934 Notre Dame Parkway, unveiled its new 16,000-square-foot academic building focused primarily on science, technology, religion, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STREAM) on Aug. 9.
Faculty, donors, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and select students were invited to the ribbon-cutting of the new STREAM center. In addition to speeches and the ribbon-cutting, the ceremony included the unveiling of a sculpture of Caroline Gerhardinger, also known as Mary Theresa of Jesus, who founded the School Sisters of Notre Dame.
“The girls have been really wanting to see this complex,” Notre Dame High School President Mark Bayens said to the crowd at the ribbon-cutting. “We did our best to keep things (a) secret as best we (could), but to … see their faces, it’s incredible, and it’s made this project in the last three years well worth it.”
Following the ceremony, an open house commenced, in which the whole community was able to attend and check out the new space. The building has three floors: the main floor, featuring a Notre Dame merchandise store in addition to classrooms, as well as a basement and a second floor. Rooms include those made for science classes, music classes, art classes and religion classes.
“We just added on a new addition to our building, and so we are giving a tour and kind of showing it off. We’re allowing a lot of our donors to come in and see what they put their money to and see how beautiful our new campus is,” Elise Niemira, an incoming junior at Notre Dame, said. “I love kind of how uniform it looks. As much as I love the old parts, it’s not as uniform as the new one.”
“We’re all excited to open the new building to all the students for this school year,” Benite Ndagijimana, an incoming senior at Notre Dame, added. “My personal new favorite is the dance room. I’m taking dance this year, so I’m excited.”
