With a series of speeches and a toast with champagne-filled test tubes, The College of Charleston officially dedicated the school’s New Sciences and Mathematics Building this afternoon.

The 125,000 square-foot building is the new home for the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Lowcountry Hazards Center, South Carolina Space Grant Offices, a NASA lunar outreach and education office, an earth history museum, GIS and Remote Sensing laboratories, and geosciences laboratories and offices.

“Whether they are participating in groundbreaking experiments, engaging in intellectual debate, studying in one of the many nooks, or simply relaxing in this beautiful courtyard, our students, faculty and staff bring energy and life to this amazing space,” says College of Charleston President P. George Benson.

During the dedication, College of Charleston Board of Trustees President Marie Land thanked the South Carolina General Assembly for contributing a portion of the funding to design and build the new building.

The new $58 million facility also features a 150-seat auditorium, state-of-the-art research and teaching laboratories, gathering areas for faculty and student interaction, a greenhouse and a large courtyard reminiscent of the walled gardens of historic Charleston.

One of the major attractions of the new building is the new Natural History Museum. This new museum will contain over 2000 vertebrate and invertebrate fossils. The collection’s focus is on North American mammals, and 90percent of these mammals once roamed the South Carolina Lowcountry.  This visually stunning collection includes complete skeletons of mammals, such as, a giant armadillo, a cave bear, and a saber-tooth cat. The fossils are part of the Mace Brown donation with an estimated value of approximately $1-1.5 million.

The museum will be open to the public later this summer.

To see a video of the new building, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10_FBxEJlIs