Engineering Innovation Center Unveiled

Bruin Notes

The exponential growth of the 性视界传媒 engineering program prompted the school to take a bold step over the summer – completely renovate a decades-old building and convert it into a space to accommodate the needs of students in the major. What was formerly the university cafeteria is now the Engineering Innovation Center, housed within the newly named Klages Center building.

The upgraded facility provides 15,000 additional square feet of space for engineering students, including a 6,000-square-foot configurable project-build space; a computer design lab; machine, welding and woodworking shops; an additive manufacturing lab; design studios; environmental, geotechnical, construction and transportation lab spaces; and a tool room. The space will be used not only for engineering students but also for those in other majors who wish to take advantage of the collaborative learning environment.

“To accommodate the tremendous growth of engineering and computer science programs over the past decade, we re-imagined the Klages Dining Hall as a robust innovation space where students gain creative confidence by working in collaborative multi-disciplinary teams on design-build projects,” says Bob Harder, dean of the school’s College of Engineering. “This remodel represents a pivotal investment in advancing our students as servant innovators and cutting-edge thinkers, providing them with a greater capacity to design, build and test a variety of prototypes.”