Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Six preschoolers on Monday morning donned tiny yellow hard hats and picked up miniature plastic shovels while digging into a small pile of dirt outside the Lynn Bennett Early Childhood Education Center at UNLV.
Even when the adults behind them had stopped digging, the children from the center’s Bumblebee classroom kept playing.
It drew a chorus of laughs and coos from the crowd that had gathered to celebrate the groundbreaking of the UNLV/Consolidated Students of the UNLV (CSUN) Preschool’s new $16 million facility expansion.
It was “an incredibly exciting day” for the center, said UNLV President Keith Whitfield, who stressed that the growth would bring more access to learning for young children.
“What you see in front of us with these six young future Rebels is the future of our country, and I think at a time when there’s so much changing, we have to make sure that we double down on early childhood education because it’s gonna have to start there,” Whitfield said. “So, this expansion, this planned construction, is going to create space for additional classrooms, enhance learning opportunities and support more research — all of those things are necessary to be able to create an educational system within Southern Nevada that benefits these young people.”
The Lynn Bennett Early Childhood Education Center — which houses the preschool — was founded by CSUN in 1972, operating under a different name within Tonopah Hall on the main campus.
It gained state licensure in 1978, was accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children in 1994 and opened as the Lynn Bennett Early Childhood Education Center in 2006 after a $5 million donation from gaming executive William Bennett and his wife, Lynn.
In 2022, the center received a $10 million gift from an anonymous donor family that led to the planned expansion. The expansion has been 10 years in the making, said Brian Steadman, an attorney and partner at the Solomon Dwiggins Freer & Steadman law firm, which represents the donor family.
The preschool is a 21,000-square-foot standalone facility that operates 51 weeks a year, serving children between 6 weeks and 5 years old. Children are taught an age-specific curriculum that focuses on physical, social, emotional and intellectual development, said Claire Tredwell, director of the UNLV/CSUN Preschool.
Students from the UNLV College of Education and division of health sciences utilize the preschool to conduct research and observations. Tredwell said anywhere from 60 to 70 students come through the UNLV/CSUN Preschool a semester.
Steadman told the audience Monday that the center had been “at the heart” of the donor family ever since one of its children attended the school after being on a waitlist for two and a half years.
The child “had a wonderful experience” and “high-quality education,” so family spent “endless hours exploring the avenues to expand the foundation.”
The preschool has 10 regular classrooms, two observation classrooms for research, a multipurpose room, administrative offices and a family resource space.
The preschool has enrolled more than 3,500 children, supported more than 800 UNLV students with their coursework, employed more than 1,200 student workers and conducted more than 42 research studies since being established.
“The UNLV preschool is an accredited, five-star school and we’re committed to providing our children and families not only more available space even with this expansion, but also the community resources needed for their family success,” Tredwell said. “The work we do here and the action that we celebrate today will continue to support our best practices for our children; increase our early childhood teacher pipeline; and advance research in the field.”
The expansion will nearly double the number of students the preschool can annually serve, raising enrollment to almost 400. The initial expansion phase includes a new 6,900 square-foot building that will have two new classrooms, a parent resource center, family lounge and conference room.
There will also be 20,000 square feet of site improvements, like a new fenced playground, metal canopies and fabric shade structures, landscape areas and the reconfiguration of an adjacent parking lot.
Gaming executive Diana Bennett, daughter of William Bennett and stepdaughter of Lynn Bennett, added that this childhood education center was “one of my father’s favorite projects” and “one of the best gifts my father ever gave.”
Though the preschool does accept children from the local community, CSUN President Allister Dias put a spotlight on student-parents at UNLV, which he said were the “lifeblood” of their student body.
Expanding the preschool means more spots open for children to gain access to critical education needs, taking them off a waitlist that Tredwell mentioned had doubled from 150 children to 385 as of this month.
An additional $6 million in gifts was collected for the preschool’s expansion effort, but the goal is to reach $21 million in total donations.
“UNLV will be able to increase services for our youngest community members and their families related to areas such as inclusive education, wellness and mental health, nutrition and early childhood educational policy and research,” said Danica Hays, dean of the UNLV College of Education. “We all know that every Nevada child deserves to receive high-quality care and early education.”