CORRECTION: Overall enrollment at the Michigan State University College of Engineering has increased by 2,394 students over the last decade. This story has been updated to reflect the correction.
EAST LANSING — Michigan State University is planning for a new engineering and digital innovation building designed for more collaboration among students and staff and long-term benefits not just for the school but for the state overall.
The MSU Board of Trustees in June authorized planning for the future MSU Engineering and Digital Innovation Center. Officials say a new center will allow students and researchers from multiple colleges and disciplines to collaborate more effectively.
“We’re moving down the path of seeking a plan that we can go build,” College of Engineering Dean Leo Kempel said. “It does take time, but we’re moving well down that path.”
Cost estimates were not immediately available for the building expected to be constructed in an area southwest of the intersection of West Shaw Lane and Red Cedar Road near the engineering building and the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility.
With a design firm in place, Kempel said the next step is finishing plans and finding a construction manager. Officials hope to have construction plans completed before the end of 2023, with the center completed in 2025 and open to students in 2026. Kempel said, however, the school could beat that timeline.
There’s hope that constructing a new, centralized engineering and design center could entice more students to attend MSU and remain in Michigan afterward. According to Kempel, nearly 60% of graduates from the College of Engineering work in Michigan.
“That’s a huge benefit to the state,” he said. “We’re looking to partner with the state in building this, because it has such an important impact on the economy, not just here, but across the state, in the Midwest and across the country. We want to partner with the state so the facility meets the needs of today and the next 10, 20 and 30 years.”
Kempel hopes the College of Engineering and the new Engineering and Digital Innovation Center will impact economic development in Michigan. One way that might happen, Kempel said, is by making materials engineering a key focus of the center. The center could look for ways of producing materials for things like electric vehicles and even semiconductors, which power greeting cards, large computers and even vehicles.
The College of Engineering continues to see an increase in enrollment, Kempel said, especially in the computer science program. One-third of 2022’s and 2023’s incoming classes want to study computer science, he said.
Overall enrollment at the College of Engineering has increased by 2,394 students over the last decade, according to MSU enrollment data.
Kempel envisions students in programs like computer science and engineering meeting to collaborate with students from other colleges, including the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Science.
“This building is being designed and will be built to foster collaboration among the various colleges on campus,” Kempel said. “That’s the way people work and learn these days. They don’t work in silos anymore. It’s a collision of ideas.”
And it’s not just about the collaborative research that can be pursued, Department of Chemical Engineering interim Chairperson Kris Chan explained. With increased conversations and collaborations comes the opportunity to develop new curricula to bridge different engineering disciplines.
“Ideally, what we hope to do is educate a workforce for the future that is interdisciplinary and will fulfill the needs of the industry going forward,” she said. “You’re bringing in different research disciplines under one roof. It’s easy now to just walk down the hall. That facilitates conversation and new ideas.
While design plans haven’t been finalized, the vision for the building is split into two components, school officials said. The first component is focused on digital learning, featuring “active” classrooms, teaching laboratories, studios where students can work on projects and areas for e-sports, according to project documents.
The second component includes such things as laboratories designed to support experimental and computational research, flexible modular research units, and community spaces to accommodate collaborations and gatherings.
Contact Mark Johnson at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.