News & Events

ARCH Students Help Design A&M’s Costa Rica Center

When students begin studying this spring at Texas A&M’s new Soltis Center for Research and Education in Costa Rica, their experience will take place on a foundation laid years earlier by students and faculty from the College of Architecture. The facility, which includes classrooms, dormitories and other facilities, is located on a 40-acre site adjacent to the Monteverde Cloud Forest, about a two-hour drive from the Central American country’s capital, San José. In 2005, Bill Soltis, a 1955 mechanical engineering graduate from Texas A&M, approached his alma mater about donating the land and building new facilities to provide an international experience for students and to protect the area’s unique ecological setting while increasing awareness for preservation efforts. He has spent most of his life in the construction business, including construction of facilities in Costa Rica. More