BUILDING UPDATE
As the incoming engineering class size swells, the current Engineering building, Kaufman Hall, has simply become too small to accommodate our rapidly expanding enrollment.
The Systems Research and Academic Building (also known as the Engineering Systems Building ESB) began this month with the closing of parking lot 20. The construction is expected to last for approximately two years. Once complete, in roughly Spring 2014, the ESB will be a 50,501 square foot building.
Some of the features ESB will have include:
- A new clean room maintained by the MAE department
- A Characterization Lab maintained by the MAE department
- A Lasers Lab maintained by the ECE department
- Two Biomedical Dry Labs and a Biomedical Web Lab maintained by the MAE department
- A MAGLEV Controls Lab maintained by the MAE department
- A Plasma Science Lab maintained by the ECE department
- A MEMS wet and dry lab maintained by the MAE department
- A Micro Fluids lab maintained by the MAE department
- A Dynamic Environment Simulation lab maintained by the MAE department
There will overall be 35 new faculty offices with additional student collaboration space throughout the building. Included in this collaboration space will be a Student Organizations Office as well as a Space Missions Control lab shared with the MAGLEV Controls lab. There will also be four Student Projects labs for our undergraduate departments. These labs will each have reconfigurable desks and computer stations as well as a garage type roll-up door for easy outside access.
Other departments making the move to the ESB are the engineering management and systems engineering department as well as the Office of the Dean, with career management and advising, and the college information technology department.