A six-year decline in enrollment coupled with an increase in operational cost forced trustees to vote in favor of a plan to shut down College of DuPage’s Early Childhood Center.

Ever wonder what is going to happen to the Beem Building, the building that housed the faculty of the college’s early childhood education program and 76 full- and part-time children?

On April 27, COD President Ann Rondeau outlined a plan that will transform the state-of-the-art building into an effective space designed to benefit students and the entire college.

The early childhood education faculty with offices in the Beem Building will move to the Berg Instructional Center (BIC). The college’s purchasing office; public relations and communications division, and planning and institutional effectiveness division will move from the BIC to the Beem Building.

This major relocation plan will convert administrative spaces into classrooms to support all students.

“These moves will permit us to make more space available in the BIC for instruction and related student and academic support as well as place administrative activities in space on the west campus that is more remote from student-focused activities and not needed for academic purposes,” Rondeau wrote in a collegewide email.

Completed in 2007, the Early Childhood Center was named after Louise M. Beem who enjoyed a 50-year career in service to the education of young children. The center has been a model childhood facility, reflecting and promoting the latest research and best teaching practices in the field of early childhood development.