The Athenaeum has been a vital part of our vision for the future of Goucher College since we began developing the Strategic Plan we are working now to realize.

As we envision it, the Athenaeum will be the flagship building of our campus. It will weave together all the various threads of life at Goucher College in one signature building—a physical centerpiece for the campus that will also be the figurative heart of our academic community.

The Athenaeum will be an intellectual nerve center, with a new, technologically superior library at its core. Outside the library's doors, a spacious open forum will serve as a focal point for performances, public discussions, and other events. Adjoining these central elements will be a café, an art gallery, a center for the college's community service and multicultural affairs programming, a private space for commuter students, and spaces for exercise, conversation, and quiet reflection and relaxation.

Goucher has never before had a facility that concentrated the energies, talents, and traditions of our campus and community in a single, central location like this. And we need it.

The lifestyles and needs of today's students demand that we rethink the way we provide resources and services to them. They are active 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Technology is changing the way they think, learn, and connect with one another. The diverse aspects of their lives—social, academic, and otherwise—are blending together, and the lines between them are becoming less clear.

Our vision for the Athenaeum recognizes these new realities. It responds to them by imagining one place where students can engage in a variety of pursuits that might otherwise scatter them to different parts of the campus. It seeks to create a sort of critical mass that can be, at times, difficult to achieve in a community of our size.

There are more immediate needs that we must recognize as well. Our existing library facilities are long overdue for renovation and have been stretched well beyond their capacity. Our outstanding special collections are stored in cramped archives that provide neither the presentation nor the protection they deserve. And as our faculty and student body continue to grow, we simply need the space that the Athenaeum—and the subsequent renovation of our existing library building—will provide.

We envision the Athenaeum as a rich and vital resource that will serve the entire Goucher community, responding to our current needs and opening the door to future possibilities that our existing resources would not enable us to realize.

We believe it will be an important catalyst for the continued evolution of Goucher College, reflecting in physical terms our ideal of a close-knit local community coming together to consider and act upon issues of global concern.

And we believe the time to build the Athenaeum is now.