NEWSPAPERS n o i t i d E l a i c e p S
September 4, 2024 candgnews.com Oakland County papers
Catholic Central opens $61 million STEM center BY CHARITY MEIER cmeier@candgnews.com
NOVI — Detroit Catholic Central High School, in Novi, which is marketed as the largest private school in the state, just got a bit larger with the opening of a new stateof-the-art science, technology, engineering and math center Aug. 11. Known as the George and Mary Turek
Hall of Science, the $61 million expansion has 57,000 square feet of learning space and is designed to last 100 years. “Sometimes schools are struggling to make the building, the facilities, the equipment work for what they want to do. We’ve been put in more of a unique situation where the donors wanted the building, and the resources going into the building, to challenge us to fill it with curriculum,” said Jake Mar-
mul, Catholic Central director of admissions and public relations. The building features an aviation suite; a fabrication and machinery shop; a sustainably focused greenhouse; a FIRST Robotics competition field, along with robotics programming and building spaces; a 4-meter Observa-Dome with a GPS computerized Celestron telescope; an innovation space; an Engineering/CAD Lab; eight dedicated sci-
ence laboratories, which are 2.5 times larger than a normal classroom; 4 lab prep rooms; and upon completion of construction, an immersion theater where students can feel like they are part of the film they are viewing. The Hall of Science is named after the parents of George Turek, an alumnus from the Class of 1966 and the primary donor for See STEM on page 5A
BANDIA THE GORILLA FLOURISHING AS A FIRST-TIME MOTHER AT DETROIT ZOO BY TAYLOR CHRISTENSEN tchristensen@candgnews.com
Bandia, 26, gave birth to her baby at the Detroit Zoo on the morning of Aug. 8. Bandia and her baby, seen here Aug. 23, can now be seen in the gorilla habitat at the Detroit Zoo. Photo by Erin Sanchez
ROYAL OAK — For the first time in the Detroit Zoo’s 96-year history, a baby gorilla has been born at it, and according to the zoo’s experts, the first few weeks of the baby gorilla’s life have been ideal. On Aug. 26, the Detroit Zoological Society announced that the baby gorilla is a girl, and the public will help choose her name. On the morning of Aug. 8, the baby girl was born to 26-year-old Bandia, a firsttime mother. The father is 36-year-old Mshindi, and both are doing well as parents, according to Detroit Zoological Society mammal and primate teams. Aaron Jesue, a member of the animal care staff specializing in great apes, said that the coming of this new baby was fast and surprising, being that it took a little less than a year for Bandia to get pregnant and have a baby. Bandia, Mshindi, 11-year-old Nayembi and 20-year-old Tulivu, all arrived in August of 2023. Jesue said that the group has been acclimating well to the new addition. “As soon as we saw that first pregnancy test — then we got another confirmation a couple weeks later, or maybe a month later — everything kicked into high gear,” Jesue said. “We were enjoying it along the way, but it was a really good and fast turnaround from the point that they got here, the group was all together, doing great, and then boom, pregnant.” For around 20 years, the Detroit Zoo took on the role of housing male apes, which they called a bachelor group. According to Jesue, the Detroit Zoological Society had one of the longest-running bachelor groups in the entire country. The goal with bringing in the female apes was to ultimately mate Mshindi and have a baby born. See GORILLA on page 4A