COLUMBUS, Ga. — A $6 million private gift has put a name on Columbus State University’s planned robotics and space science building, a $22.2 million project the school is pitching as a statewide pipeline for tech workers.
The University System of Georgia Board of Regents approved naming the building the Pezold Center for Emergent Technology, recognizing donations from a longtime Columbus business owner and his wife. Of the gift, $4 million will go toward the building and $2 million will permanently endow a distinguished institute chair, a technologist and economic development leader who will work from the center.
Most of the money is public. The project combines $12.2 million in state appropriations, $4 million in federal grants and $2 million in special-purpose local option sales tax funds from the Muscogee County School District. Planning began after the state finalized its 2026 budget, and it will be the first new state-funded academic building at Columbus State in more than two decades.
The roughly 36,000-square-foot center will rise on the Main Campus parallel to Interstate 185, across the parking lot from the Elizabeth Bradley Turner Center. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2027, with the building expected to be fully operational in fall 2028.
It will house three pieces under one roof: the university’s Robotics Engineering program, a relocated and expanded Coca-Cola Space Science Center, and a new Institute for Emergent Technology. The robotics program has grown from six students when it launched in 2019 to more than 100 undergraduate and graduate students, and its graduates have gone on to jobs at companies such as Pratt & Whitney.
The space science center, which the university calls Georgia’s only science center and museum dedicated to astronomy and space science, holds more than 300 NASA artifacts. About 17,000 Muscogee County students visit it each year.
The new institute will pair university faculty with industry practitioners in a hybrid teaching model aimed at cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced computing. Columbus State President Stuart Rayfield said in the announcement that the gift cements the school as a statewide engine for economic development and industry recruitment. The university also plans research and testing work with nearby Fort Benning.
