Every GHC student has to take at least one science sequence to graduate. What most students don’t realize until they are enrolled is that specific sciences are offered at some of the five campuses.

The Floyd campus offers the most science options with biology, geology, chemistry, physics and astronomy. At the Cartersville campus only biology, geology and physics are offered every semester.

For the upcoming spring semester, Marietta and Douglasville will offer some biology, geology and chemistry courses; Paulding will only offer some biology and geology courses.

However, when sequences are not available the next semester or guaranteed to be offered at that campus again, students’ graduation times suffer. This problem mainly affects students with science majors.

Sophomore Melisa Gonzalez is a food science major at the Cartersville campus and is currently taking her first science, Biology 2107K.

“Highlands is the ideal place to get your cores done, but I could only take one science course here because many weren’t offered consecutively, and I couldn’t travel to other campuses to take the second course,” said Gonzalez.

She is transferring to UGA in the spring and will continue her science courses there.

“I would have loved to get a majority of my sciences done here, but the times of the courses did not fit my schedule,” Gonzalez said.

Georgia Highlands has been planning a science building for Cartersville since last year’s budget allowed extra money for the architect to plan the blueprints.

The building will be directly opposite the academic building and roughly the same size. The academic building was planned to hold 1,500 students and the current Cartersville enrollment rate is around 2,300.

It will hold enough classrooms for all the major science courses, such as biology, chemistry, microbiology and physics.

Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs Laura Musselwhite is thrilled about this planned expansion of the science facilities. “This building will allow more students to complete their programs, and it will add to the campus life at Cartersville,” said Musselwhite.

According to Musselwhite, it is unknown when the construction of the new building will begin. GHC was not approved for necessary construction funds for this year but hopes to be approved next year.