New Opportunities with New Addition

Night and day. That’s the difference between Coover Hall and the first phase of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building Addition (ECpE Building) that opened last spring.

The buildings may be attached but shared hallways are about all the two homes of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have in common. On the Coover Hall side the facility is showing its age. The ECpE Building is bright and sparkling new.

Ashley Good, a senior computer engineering major from Rochester, Minn., is just one of the many Iowa State students who are excited about the new building.

"It’s modern, comfortable and student friendly compared to the old space in Coover," she says.

The first of two phases of construction, the $16.5 million facility provides 23,000 square feet of state-of-the-art classrooms, and research and teaching laboratories equipped with the latest equipment and technology for students and faculty.

New classrooms and laboratories for teaching and research allow Iowa State’s electrical and computer engineering programs to recruit and retain top students and faculty, positioning the program as one of the best in the nation.

"There is now an unifying space for students who live, work and play here," said Doug Jacobson, University Professor of electrical and computer engineering. "Previously we had labs scattered all over the place. There was no breakout space for the students and the classrooms were some of the worst on campus."

"In my 25 years at Iowa State, I think I taught only five classes in Coover."

That has changed with the ECpE Building, "Now you walk down the new hallways and you will see the department’s faculty and students teaching and taking classes in that building," Jacobson said.

Good agrees. She says in her previous three years at Iowa State, she rarely took a class in Coover, avoiding the facility as much as possible.

"The new addition is such an improvement over what we had in the past," she said. "Now there are designated labs for specific classes including an undergraduate computer lab and a freshman computer lab."

Research efforts also enhanced

Researchers in electrical and computer engineering are also experiencing the impact of the new building. In one instance, previously there was no dedicated lab space for bioengineering. Instead researchers only had a shared space in the Carver High-Spec Communications Laboratory in Coover Hall.

Now researchers in this area have a dream lab. The facility is equipped with three high-powered microscopes, furnace, high-precision electrical instruments, heater, chemical and biological safety hoods, distilled water tank, carbon dioxide incubator for growing biological specimens, and a centrifuger.

Department officials hope the new facility will also be a draw to graduate students. The new addition has an open, airy feel to it with glass windows allowing passersby to see research activities.

"We want to create an environment that graduate students want to be in," Jacobson said. "Plus we feel that undergraduates will walk by and see the type of research that is going on, hopefully enticing them to be a part of that research."

Good is one of those students. She is planning to attend graduate school and is now considering continuing at Iowa State for her master’s because of the new facility.

Work not yet done

While the new addition is the focal area of the department, help is scheduled to soon be on the way to old Coover Hall. The second phase of the project will add an additional 33,000 square feet to the building and be home for advising and senior design, as well as offices for staff, faculty and graduate students.

That’s important, Jacobson said, because the department is spread throughout buildings on campus including Nuclear Engineering, Durham, Coover and Town Halls. After the second phase is complete, the department will be housed primarily in Coover and its additions. Some faculty will remain in Durham Hall.

"Phase two will create a faculty/student cluster space," he said. "We will be able to arrange our activities more logically."

Other tentative plans for phase two include an atrium, which would be created by enclosing the courtyard in Coover Hall with a glass roof. This will provide space for students and faculty to meet and discuss projects.

"It will be a combination of new and renovated space," Jacobson said. "The current Coover Hall really has a lot of inefficient spaces. It’s hard to heat and hard to cool."

"The building was built in a different age when the department’s focus wasn’t what it is today."

A feasibility study is underway for phase two, which is scheduled to be funded by private donors and state funds. The project will cost an estimated $22.3 million and groundbreaking for the phase is anticipated in 2010.

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