Believe it or not, during the early 1900’s, the Education Building that is nestled on Bascom Hill once housed engineering students.
The newly renovated interior of the Mechanical Engineering Building provides students with an open, inviting place to do schoolwork.
Photo Credit: Mohd Helmi Bin Hasan AdiiBy the end of World War I, the College of Engineering was startled by a massive influx of students. Freshman enrollment doubled from 1916 to 1920, and the college administration realized that packing their students into overcrowded laboratories would not suffice. In response, they built a 20,000-square-foot, heavy-duty machine shop, nicknamed “Sawtooth,” on the north end of Camp Randall along University Avenue. This was the first mark of engineering territory.
Yet the shop building was not enough. The building on Bascom Hill was still overflowing with engineering students, who now had to walk across campus to get to their shop classes.
Dean Turneaure, the engineering dean at the time, devised a solution. He appointed a construction committee to plan the design of the new engineering building on the Camp Randall site. Like the Spanish empire expanded into the western hemisphere in the 18th century, the engineering department expanded to the western side of campus.
The new engineering building was three stories high, 81,000 square feet and formed a U-shape around the sawtooth shop. Needless to say, as of the 1931 fall semester, engineering faculty and students had more breathing room.
That was then; this is now.
“Mechanical engineering has changed a lot in the last 75 years. It has become much more science-based, research-intensive and extremely high-tech,” Paul Peercy, dean of the College of Engineering, says.
To support the advancing field of engineering, Peercy wanted a building that would be “state-of-the-art, but easily reconfigured as needs change with time—a building that would be flexible and usable for the next 50 or 75 years.”
The Supplementary instruction room, an enclosure within the Student Learning Center, allows students to learn from their peers.
Photo Credit: Mohd Helmi Bin Hasan AdiiTo meet this need, renovations to what is now known as the Mechanical Engineering Building included a new electrical and data infrastructure to support the several modern research laboratories, classrooms and lecture halls that the building now contains. Also, a new elevator was added that will make the building more accessible for disabled students and faculty. Finally, a new central heating, ventilating and air conditioning system to replace the multiple substandard mechanical systems that once served the building was installed.
“The total construction project more than doubles the square footage of the building,” Peercy says.
As immense as this building project was, the Mechanical Engineering Building wasn’t the only site of recent development in the engineering empire.
“When I came here as dean, I did some analyses and I found that about half the students that enter college saying they want a degree in engineering actually get a degree in engineering,” Peercy says.
The number one reason the other half doesn’t earn a degree in engineering is because, as Peercy says, they have difficulty in math and science their first year.
To assist the success of students in the College of Engineering, Peercy had a vision for a “welcoming, open and easily reconfigured” space where students can work in groups or individually and obtain the assistance they need.
As of the 2007 spring semester, Engineering Hall received the 4,500-square-foot renovation Peercy envisioned: the Student Learning Center. This center encompasses a student information area, seminar rooms, a group tutoring area, a group study area, individual study areas, informal space and an internet caf