College of Engineering Dean's Blog

Dear CoE Alumni and Friends,

You are receiving this, because you have generously giving toward the realization of a new state-of-the-art building at Tennessee Tech that will help drive the success of our students and seal our reputation as the best engineering college in the South. Because of your generosity, I want to share with you the status of the building as we proceed with the planning, design and build phases.

Almost immediately upon returning to campus on Jan. 2, a team of faculty began actively serving on the Engineering Building Advisory Committee. The committee members were selected from recommendations provided by departments chairs within the College of Engineering and included:

Cynthia Rice, Ph.D., associate professor, Chemical Engineering

Bill Eberle, Ph.D., professor, Computer Science, and

Stephen Canfield, Ph.D., professor, Mechanical Engineering

They were tasked with representing the needs of all departments, and not just their respective majors, in order to help deliver the best possible plan for the new building. The committee met each day for one week, with action items due each day.

We were under a very high-pressure/tight deadline for delivering an updated detailed program for the new building to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission by Friday, January 10. The program we delivered identified:

• Allocations of space – what will need to go into the building;
• Adjacencies that are involved – what other areas will need to be collocated;
• What new furniture/equipment (outfitting) will need to be purchased.

The original plans that were submitted to THEC last year were preliminary plans. While we will be able to adapt and tweak those as we move forward, we will have a much better result by aggressively reviewing and forming more detailed plans early in the planning stage.

With that in mind, the team has brainstormed many possibilities. Additionally, we have asked everyone in the College of Engineering to review the program details and submit their suggestions. Committee members have been reaching out/walking the halls to talk to everyone they can meet to solicit ideas.

We have also begun the next step of fusing labs and facilities. Some examples of this already exist in the Detailed Program that was submitted to THEC last year. However, we are trying to take this a step further – with labs, classrooms, and other spaces designed to be used by students from multiple disciplines at a much higher rate than many of our labs are now used.

This process has already drawn the observation that the new building design will provide opportunities for other CoE buildings. We need to be cognizant that in four years, it is reasonable to think that renovations of existing CoE buildings will be in the planning stages.

Once our plans are complete, we will move on to detailed design of labs, classrooms, etc. There will be dozens of groups consulted on these designs at this phase. As you can imagine – timelines for each phase of the process will be tight.

This is an exciting time for the college – but it will come with a great deal of work. I have to express how quickly the advisory committee has engaged and dug into the process. Cross departmental collaboration has already begun. We invite you to join us in developing our new flagship building. I encourage you to send your comments and suggestions throughout the process to me via email at engineering@TNTech.edu. Wings up!

 

Best Regards,

 

 

Joseph C. Slater, Dean
College of Engineering