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
- A Characterization Lab
- A Lasers Lab
- Two Biomedical Dry Labs and a Biomedical Web Lab
- A MAGLEV Controls Lab
- A Plasma Science Lab
- A Microelectromechanical Systems wet and dry lab
- A Micro Fluids lab
- A Dynamic Environment Simulation lab
There will be 30 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 studios for our undergraduate programs. These studios will have flexible architecture with reconfigurable benches and equipment cages as well as high-bay roll-up doors for access.
Others 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 Engineering Fundamentals Division, and the College's information technology group.