DePaul University will break ground June 30 on a $12 million biology and environmental sciences facility to be named for William G. McGowan, the late founder of MCI Communications.

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) will participate in the ceremony scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m. on DePaul's Lincoln Park quadrangle, just north of Belden Avenue at Seminary Avenue.

The facility will advance DePaul's plans to strengthen teaching and research in biology and environmental science programs, improve science education for non-majors and attract women and minority students to science careers.

The McGowan Charitable Fund, based in Washington, D.C., has made its pledge in the form of a challenge and will match each contribution from DePaul alumni and friends up to $2.5 million.

DePaul Trustee Sue Ling Gin, chairman of Flying Food Fare, Inc., chairs the Leadership Committee for the Campaign for Education in Science and was instrumental in securing the gift. Gin is McGowan's widow and a trustee of the McGowan Fund.

"Sue Gin's leadership in the philanthropic community has increased access for urban students and has improved the quality of education available in Chicago," said the Rev. John P. Minogue, C.M., DePaul's president. "We owe a debt of gratitude to Sue and the McGowan Fund."

The north portion of the current Stuart Center will be torn down to accommodate the 60,000-square-foot, two-story building. Biology and environmental science classes are now taught in a 60-year-old building with inadequate space and amenities to serve today's science students.

The new facility features nine research labs, seven classroom labs, two open-style environmental science labs, two rooftop greenhouses, two lounges, a computer lab, faculty offices and accessibility for disabled students. It will open in the fall of 1998.

With Durbin's backing, the U.S. Department of Agriculture committed $4.85 million to the project in part to support Congress' desire to increase minority participation in the sciences.

One way DePaul has responded to that objective has been to establish a partnership with the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. DePaul will recruit Chicago high school students who would benefit from DePaul's small class size and personalism into its science and math foundation classes. Students can take a two- or three-year track of basics at DePaul and then transfer into U of I's food sciences program. The food manufacturing industry in the Midwest has plentiful job openings and is seeking well-prepared graduates to fill them.

This initiative complements numerous other programs DePaul has undertaken to increase the number of minority students entering science, math and technology fields.

One such program is the Alliance for Minority Participation, a consortium of 18 Chicago universities and colleges funded by the National Science Foundation. Through the alliance, DePaul developed the Science Preparatory Institute, an intensive interdisciplinary summer program that explores the ecology of the Chicago River watershed, introducing pre-freshmen and transfer students in the sciences to DePaul's scientific community.

Michael L. Mezey, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said, "The McGowan Biological and Environmental Sciences Building will do much to enhance the quality of education in the sciences at DePaul. Most importantly, it will provide our students with access to state-of-the-art laboratories that will enable them to gain hands-on research experience for their own projects or faculty research projects."