Engineering Hall officially opened for classes on Jan. 20 despite missing equipment and having areas still under construction.

About a third to a half of marker boards have not yet been installed in classrooms and labs, and the current room and directional signage is temporary until the pieces arrive. Some furniture and supplies are still on order and there are paint touchups to be completed as well.

Photograph by Jodi Krautkramer

“We have what we need to teach, for now,” Harold Evensen, physics and engineering physics program coordinator, said. “It would have been nice, I think, if things had been done a month earlier. It just means we’re scrambling a bit more than otherwise, but I think we all feel like in the long term, this will be a great building in which to teach.”

In some areas of the building the infrastructure remains exposed by design to serve as a learning tool for engineering students.

The building was finished a little later than expected but staff was allowed to occupy the building Jan. 9.

The new facility has offered departments and professors tools that they didn’t have previously in Ottensman Hall including larger laboratories, new lab equipment, labs equipped with computers, document cameras and projectors, micro electro mechanical systems, nanotechnology and bio medical specialized combination lab-classrooms and a lab dedicated to renewable energy. The facility is also energy conscious and is equipped with motion sensor lights in halls, classrooms and restrooms.

The set up of many of the labs and lecture rooms are proving beneficial to many instructors’ teaching needs and styles.

“One advantage over anything in Otts are the individual tables that group students by groups of four,” Karland Kilian, lecturer in the chemistry and engineering physics department, said. “This makes it very easy for me to give in-class assignments that are worked on collaboratively.”

“At first it was kind of weird because the desks were set up in a lab setting not lecture setting so your side would be facing the board, but for groups its great,” Benjamin Prindle, senior industrial technology management major, said. “And the white boards are on the long walls and the projector is at the front so the professor has to walk back and forth. But I think everyone is getting adjusted to it and it’s nice to bounce ideas off a group, plus I get to know everyone in my classes. Otherwise, I enjoy it a lot and it’s convenient because I live in Southwest Hall.”

Some staff has found that size and space has been compromised in areas of the building compared to Ottensman.

“The restrooms are smaller than the ones in Ottensman Hall, and those were too small, and the office workstations in this building have less storage space than [old desks] in Otts,” David Drury, professor in electrical engineering, said.

Instructors are also concerned with the amount of time it takes to walk from the new facility to the rest of campus when there are only eight minutes between classes, as well as the separation of the secretary of the Electrical Engineering Department whom is now located on the second floor while the rest of the department is located on the third.

“I think, with any kind of construction, there are always going to be things missing when a facility is opened for the first time,” Barb Daus, special assistant to the chancellor, said.

It is important to note that the “Engineering Hall will compliment, not replace Ottensman Hall,” Chancellor David Markee, said. The creation of new education space in Engineering Hall will free existing space in Ottensman Hall for continued engineering growth.

Future renovations on campus include the addition and update of Williams Fieldhouse and renovation of Boebel Hall, Karrmann Library, Ottensman Hall, some CFA spaces and the Pioneer Farm Beef Center.