Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School Chaplain Fr. Seth Arnold blessed the school’s new classrooms last month as part of an internal ribbon-cutting ceremony. The space, previously used for worship, has been repurposed to serve educational needs.

Rob Knapp, KMC’s president, explained that a basement was excavated beneath the science and technology wing when it was constructed in 2002. "We had been using that as a temporary chapel space," he said. "And since the new chapel has been opened, we no longer need that temporary chapel space."

Knapp mentioned that the long-term plan was always to convert the area into classrooms. This decision was driven not by increased enrollment but by a more diverse curriculum. Consequently, the space now houses eight classrooms and additional storage.

"We designed the rooms to be fairly generic so they could be used for any subject matter," Knapp stated. However, specific accommodations were made for certain programs: "We did move our engineering program down there, so we have one room specifically designed to meet the needs of the engineering program, and one room that was specifically designed to meet the needs of our computer science program."

The ribbon-cutting ceremony and general blessing took place on August 9 during in-service meetings for faculty and staff.