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RTHS

 

The STEM-focused charter high school will move into the building currently occupied by Sigma Xi, located across the street from RTP’s Park Center development, and The Frontier.

March 20, 2015 (Research Triangle Park, NC)The Research Triangle High School (RTHS) has finalized the purchase of the property at 3106 NC Highway 54 in The Research Triangle Park currently occupied by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. The high school is currently located at Park Center, and has been rapidly outgrowing their current location for the past two school years.

RTHS paid $6.2 million for the property, and closed on March 9th. After gaining an endorsement from Durham County Commissioners, a lending agency in Wisconsin provided them with the tax-exempt bond needed finalize the purchase of the property.

“We are so happy that RTHS has found a new home within The Research Triangle Park,” said Bob Geolas, President and CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation of NC. “The easy access to STEM professionals is something that makes the school so popular among students and parents alike. It’s wonderful that the high school will now be able to educate so many more students over the coming years.”

RTHS welcomed its first class of 145 ninth graders in August 2012 at its current location at 10 Park Drive. Each year since opening, they have added a new class of ninth graders bringing current total enrollment across grades nine to eleven to345. Because of the continued growth, a search has been underway for a new space that will allow for expansion since last spring.

Part of the school’s popularity can be attributed to its focus on real-world applications of STEM and business concepts both in and out of the classroom. In addition to traditional high school courses, RTHS offers an entrepreneurship club, an NCFIRST Robotics team, and a Technovation app coding club just for girls. These organizations, paired with the ability to directly partner with employees working in these fields, is one undeniable perk of keeping the high school located in RTP. In fact, out of the 18 companies currently providing tutors, mentors and other support, over half are located within the 7,000 acres of RTP including Syngenta, NetApp, RTI International, The Research Triangle Foundation of NC, Liquidia Technologies, Lenovo and UNC TV.

“In addition to the centralized location of the Research Triangle Park, the knowledge base provided by those employed by companies here is something that cannot be matched,” said Pamela Blizzard, Managing Director and Founder of Research Triangle High School. “We have students from eleven counties that come to school here each day just for this unique educational opportunity. Moving into the Sigma Xi building will enable us to offer that to even more deserving students.”

The new building will provide space that is needed in order for the high school to continue to expand. The Sigma Xi building has 52,000 sq. ft. of space located on 10.15 acres. Located just across the street from RTP’s Park Center development, RTHS students will be in a prime location to access all the forthcoming amenities that project will bring. The new site is also on the same five bus routes that have made 10 Park Drive such an accessible location for RTHS’ broad spectrum of students.

About Research Triangle High School
RTHS is an independent public charter high school, which is a technical way of saying that we are accountable to the state and the public, don’t charge tuition, and welcome all applicants. We see school differently. We see a place where the walls keep out the cold, not the world. We see a place where what a student does is more important than where the student comes from, where success is rewarded but the effort that provides it is cherished. We see a place where students work together to construct within and between themselves the skills and habits an uncertain future requires. We seek to move students from dependent to independent learners; from receivers to creators of knowledge. We offer an unconventional way of experiencing conventional knowledge through experiential learning, and we bring the science of RTP into the curriculum. We ask a lot of our students but have built the support structures needed to help them reach the high bar. We bring an entrepreneurial spirit to proven educational practice and current research, seeking to build a school that changes the lives of its own students as well as helping other schools to change theirs.

About the Research Triangle Park
The Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina serves the Research Triangle Park, a bellwether institution that was once referred to by Governor Luther Hodges as the “heart and hope of North Carolina.” Situated centrally among Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, RTP contains 7,000 acres, 40,000+ employees, and over 190 companies, including Avaya, Cisco, Credit Suisse, IBM, NetApp, RTI International and Syngenta. RTP is also home to The Lab, an affordable incubation space for entrepreneurs and startups.

 

For More Information:

Pamela Blizzard
Managing Director, Research Triangle High School
919.998.6745 | pblizzard@rthighschool.org

Julie Terry
Marketing and Special Projects Manager, The Research Triangle Park
919.564.5206 | terry@rtp.org