St. Brendan High breaks ground for Innovation Center

By Marlene Quaroni - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Bianca Hernandez, 16, is thinking about going into nursing. Chris Tapanes, 15, wants to study law. Both St. Brendan High School students will have a brand new place to get hands-on experience next year, when a state-of-the-art-facility, to be called the Innovation Center, opens on campus.

“The space we have now is limited,” said Hernandez, 16, who is the junior class president.

She was one of about 30 students, many wearing white plastic hardhats with a green letter B on the front, who participated in a groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 10 for the new building, which is scheduled to open in time for the 2016-2017 school year.

“What we have now is really limited,” Hernandez said. “The new building will have a medical lab with a hospital room and patient simulator. The multipurpose room will be big enough for a theatre production and there will be a spacious broadcast studio for in-house productions from our school’s SBN, St. Brendan News.”

Tapanes, a sophomore, said he likes the idea of having mock trials in the new building’s multipurpose room.

“Lawyers and others from the legal profession can visit our school and teach us in a realistic setting,” he said. “I’m looking forward to learning in the new facility.”

The $9 million, two-story, 60,000 square foot Innovation Center is the first new construction on campus since the school opened in 1975. Originally, the school’s buildings were part of St. John Vianney College Seminary next door. When enrollment at the seminary declined in the early 1970s, Archdiocese of Miami officials decided to convert the seminary buildings into a co-educational high school, named St. Brendan. Its enrollment today stands at 1,150.

In 2012, the school developed a curriculum tailored to students’ interests and focused on making them college and career ready. Four “academies” were developed: STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), Law and Global Business, Medical Sciences and Visual and Performing Arts.

“We ask freshmen to decide which academy they want to enter in their sophomore year,” said Ivette Alvarez, St. Brendan counseling director, adding that a college and career counseling center will be an important component of the new Innovation Center. “This is where students will identify new careers that they can pursue and obtain the funds and scholarships needed to be successful.”

Jose Rodelgo-Bueno, St. Brendan principal, called the groundbreaking the beginning of a new chapter in the school’s story.

“This is a historic and monumental milestone,” he said. “In the Innovation Center our students will use their creativity and inspiration to brainstorm and ultimately invent the new careers of the future. This facility has cutting-edge architecture and has been purposefully designed to be the home of research initiatives, inventions, pioneering ideas and startups, a high school with Silicon Valley traits.”

Rodelgo-Bueno added that the Innovation Center is the first phase of a master plan to expand and improve the entire campus, including developing the athletic fields, expanding the gym, and adding an auditorium and performing arts center.

Father Jose Alvarez, St. Brendan High School president, said that he was grateful to all those who helped get the project underway.

“You don’t get to a day like this without collaboration,” he said. “Archbishop Thomas Wenski and Sister Elizabeth Worley have been a great supporters of this project. We thank everyone who has made this possible.”

Bishop Peter Baldacchino, who blessed the ground where the Innovation Center will be constructed, echoed the words of Father Alvarez.

“This project is very dear to Bishop Wenski,” he said. “We will be watching its progress. We believe in you students. You can accomplish great things with the help of Jesus Christ.”