New campus promises a bright future for students — and neighborhood

When Aisha Francis, president of Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, talks about the school’s new home in Roxbury’s Nubian Square, she describes a place that is rooted in its past but looking toward the future.

The floor of the building’s lobby is embedded with brass plaques that chronicle the history of the site from Indigenous times to the opening of the new campus on Jan. 14. On the third floor of the building hangs an enormous mobile made of reclaimed lumber from the parcel’s history as Harrison Supply Company, a hardware store.

“I think it’s important for people to understand and be able to weave together the different elements in land use from then until now,” Francis said. “We’re one of the caretakers,” she said.

But just down the hall from the mobile, students seated in a flexible lab space have the opportunity to learn about robotics, biotechnology or cybersecurity. A spacious, student-run automotive shop with garage doors opens out to a courtyard off Eustis Street and gives easy access to students and the community alike to see how the next generation of auto technicians are trained.

“The concept of building a new campus for a better way to live out our mission has been talked about for decades,” Francis said about the new space, which can more nimbly train students in the many two-year, technical and trade degrees Franklin Cummings Tech offers.

The plan to move to the new location at the corner of Eustis Street and Harrison Avenue was announced in 2019 and meant leaving behind a hundred-year-old building in the South End.

“It’s just barely a mile away, but it’s a world of difference in terms of our ability to be an anchor institution,” Francis said.

That includes bringing the campus closer to those students who live in and around Nubian Square. Some 20% of the student body is from Roxbury, according to Francis, as Roxbury high schools serve as feeders for the college’s programs. The college is also seeing an increasing number of its staff come from the neighborhood.

Franklin Cummings Tech also has commercial agreements with local retailers like Frugal Bookstore, Dudley Cafe and the nearby Nubian Ascends development. That project will include two floors dedicated to training space for careers in life sciences and health care, something project developer Richard Taylor believes will be an important step toward closing longstanding racial wealth gaps in the city. As part of the partnership, Franklin Cummings Tech will have students in the school’s biotech associates degree program complete coursework at the lab space with instructors from the school.

The campus’ design, with wide windows that allow passersby to look in much the same way as students within look out, is also meant to foster engagement with the community.

“There’s a direct connection with the neighborhood as they walk by,” District 7 City Councilor Miniard Culpepper said during a recent tour. “Folks were smiling at me as they were walking by because they see new opportunities, a new beginning, right here in Nubian Square.”

There are also more direct ways for the community to relate to the school. Neighbors can bring their cars to the auto shop to have them worked on by students for the price of parts — a carry-over program from the old location. A new effort will invite neighbors who need glasses to be fitted by students who are studying to be opticians.

That experience-based approach is on hand elsewhere in the school as well. Rooftop solar panels to be installed on the building will provide real-world learning for students in the renewable energy technology program, for instance.

“It’s wonderful to have a campus that’s part of our teaching tools,” Francis said.

The school’s opening comes during a broader effort to revitalize the Nubian Square area. Other projects that are part of that effort include the Jazz Urbane Cafe, the new home for the Community Music Center of Boston and a mix of new housing and office space. Culpepper pointed to the upcoming Nubian Ascends development and its plan to include a 300-seat theater as another example.

“When you look at New York with Broadway and Times Square, folks go down to a play and they’ll go to dinner before the play, or they’ll go after the play — I’ve done it,” Culpepper said. “I’ll be able to do that right here in Nubian Square.”

The school’s new chapter builds on a long legacy that dates to an investment made by the school’s namesake, Benjamin Franklin, in his will, when he died in 1790. Those funds — left to the City of Boston to support loans to young men working as tradesmen and artisans — were ultimately used to support the opening of the original school in the early 1900s. More than 200 years later, that initial investment that Franklin bequeathed is helping the school continue to pay it forward.

“When we welcome Franklin Cummings Tech — and we do welcome them to Nubian Square — we look at the investment; we look at the doors that it will open,” said Culpepper. “We look at what’s possible when education and opportunity meet in the heart of Nubian Square.”