Latest Reports

The $78 million, 108,000-sf Ferland Engineering Education and Design Center opened to students on Aug. 24, 2022, marking the University of Maine’s first step in a $600 million master facilities plan that aims to renovate or replace all engineering and computing buildings on the school’s main campus in Orono. The update of these facilities also aligns with the proposed Maine College of Engineering, Computing, and Information Science (MCECIS), a statewide initiative to equip Maine’s technical workforce with new teaching methods, curricula, and capital investments in infrastructure over the next 10 years, all aimed at addressing the current shortage of engineering and computing graduates. 

The Student Success District is a ground-breaking addition to the University of Arizona’s urban fabric. The design strengthens connections between new and existing structures, activates underutilized spaces, and prioritizes the student experience. The complex project revitalizes the Main Library and the Bear Down Gymnasium, reorients the entry to the Albert B. Weaver Science-Engineering Library, and merges the buildings with a new 55,000-sf Center for Academic Success.

The University of Maryland in Baltimore County (UMBC) is surpassing expectations for student retention, faculty recruitment, and productivity by using active learning, pioneering research models, and new building occupancy criteria in its Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building (ILSB). The 130,000-gsf building, which opened in 2019, provides 70,000 nasf of flexible research and education space to accommodate current and future students and faculty in the life sciences and biotechnology programs.

Many college graduates remember, with varying degrees of fondness, the spartan cinder-block dorms of their youth. Today, when most universities are competing for students, the pressure is on to add amenities like e-sports rooms, private bathrooms, and walk-in closets. How can an institution stay competitive while still keeping costs down? The secrets include thorough planning and canny management of contingency.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh is working in partnership with San Francisco-based Emerald Cloud Lab on a new $40 million facility that will house more than 200 discrete life science and chemistry research instruments, but very few human researchers, teachers, or students. Instead, the instruments and artificial intelligence tools within the new CMU Cloud Lab can be accessed remotely via the cloud from anywhere in the world to conduct experiments at any time of the day or night. The new 16,000-sf Cloud Lab will be housed in a CMU-owned building in Pittsburgh’s Bakery Square, 10 minutes from the main campus. Construction is scheduled to conclude by May 2023 and to be fully operational by the fall 2023 semester.