Lakeland students may have noticed some construction within the past two weeks at the intersection of county high­ways A and M. The structure will become, as Senior Vice President of Administration Daniel Eck calls it, Lakeland College’s “monument sign.”

“When the building process of this sign is complete, the tow­ering monument sign will reach to approximately forty feet high,” said Eck; this way it will be tall enough to see from any direction from which a person comes.

He disclosed that the sign was modeled after Old Main, the building that has become iconic for Lakeland College. The materi­als utilized for the brick portion of the sign, as well as for the font, are the same as those used for the front entrance Lakeland College installed at the be­ginning of the 2011 school year.

The monu­ment sign will cre­ate “a sense of pres­ence right away,” said Eck. “The front entrance and the sign stand as Lake­land’s approach to upgrade.”

Eck is confi­dent the install­ment of this sign will positively influence first impressions of the college and enrollment growth, as well as give Lakeland students a sense of unity.

The funds for this $115,000 project were donated from “a sin­gle donor who wanted to help the college in this way,” Eck said. He admits that the amount sounds costly, but reconciles this fact by saying renovations and upgrades “are built to last.” The base and foundation are made from brick and concrete while the peak is made of fiberglass.

Eck stated that the tricky part about the sign project was not the actual building process, but rather where to build it. “We had to find the right distance,” Eck said while recounting the geographical trou­bles they had. The sign had to be far enough away from the road so that people driving by could see it, but it couldn’t be too far back because of nearby marshlands. Eck also disclosed that the land on which the sign has been built was donated by the Moir family, with whom Lake­land College has an easement agree­ment.

Eck is confi­dent that the entire project will be fin­ished approximately a week after homecoming.

The front entrance and mon­umental sign are Lakeland’s first steps in upgrading the campus. Eventually, academic buildings, dormitories, and other buildings will be renovated as needed. No one knows what Lakeland College will look like five to ten years from now, but the road to change began with a single sign.