Southeast Community College’s (SCC) Academic Excellence Center was recognized with a 2023 AIA Education Facility Design Award. This program is the AIA’s highest honor acknowledging design excellence on 13 education facilities in the United States and Mexico.

“The center is a simple, elegant solution that remains sensitive to its context. It allows students to engage with their peers, a critical consideration for any commuter college.” – Jury comment

The Academic Excellence Center is the first purpose-built academic facility completed as part of a campus-wide revitalization masterplan for Southeast Community College’s Beatrice Campus. Supporting an array of STEM disciplines, from physics to health sciences to music and fine arts, the facility establishes a new benchmark for future development and attempts to address one of community college’s most significant yet paradoxical challenges — to create ‘community’ among a largely non-traditional, commuter-based population. Contributing to this resolve, the focus was placed on occupant comfort, access to daylight, creating equitable opportunities for study and engagement, connectivity to the rural context driving the college’s STEM programming, accessibility to faculty, and embracing an ethos of wellness and environmental stewardship.

“[The outcome is] in alignment with the College’s vision to create dedicated destinations and the highest quality learning climates through permanent, innovative, modern, virtually linked, sustainable, and collaborative facilities and green spaces,” said SCC President Dr. Paul Illich.

The project design celebrates the rural vernacular of Nebraska through color, texture, rhythm, and scale, both inside and out. The scrim wall’s functional aesthetic nods to the exposed structure of metal grain silos while the dappled light that filters through was designed to model the way light permeates the porous walls of nearby wooden barns—both vernacular “machines” purpose-built to serve the state’s agricultural industry.

“Grounded in an evidence-based research approach, our education practice prioritizes the holistic needs of students and teachers,” stated Associate Principal and lead designer on the project, Kelly Dreyer, AIA.

The 52,000 sq. ft. Academic Excellence Center’s design celebrates the rural vernacular of Nebraska through color, texture, rhythm, and scale, both inside and out. The scrim wall’s functional aesthetic nods to the exposed structure of metal grain silos while the dappled light that filters through was designed to model the way light permeates the porous walls of nearby wooden barns—both vernacular “machines” purpose-built to serve the state’s agricultural industry.

The Academic Excellence Center was a design collaboration between Multistudio and BVH Architecture. You can visit Architect Magazine to learn more about this collaboration and the awards program at the link below.