Even though engineers like to build things, the College of Engineering hasn’t put up a new building in almost half a century. The last building, the Dougherty Engineering Building, was completed in 1964, when the tools and facilities for teaching were much less sophisticated than they are today.
The college currently has three buildings in various stages of planning or construction—the Min H. Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building, the John Tickle Engineering Building, and the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials.
Thanks to a 2005 gift of $17.5 million from Min H. Kao, chairman and CEO of Garmin International Inc., a world leader in GPS technology, the Min H. Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building, scheduled for a fall 2011 opening, is far along in construction.
Besides housing classrooms, laboratories, and a 2,500-square-foot auditorium, the 150,000-square-foot facility will be an environmentally friendly structure.
In 2009, John Tickle, an industrial engineering alumnus of the college and the president and owner of Strongwell Corporation, and his wife, Ann, also a UT Knoxville grad, offered a donation for a new building to house the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Information Engineering. Additional funding from the state of Tennessee and the chancellor’s office, as well as gifts from UT Knoxville alumni Chad and Ann Holliday, Jim Gibson, and Eric Zeanah, have created a true public–private partnership to build this facility.
Groundbreaking for the 5-story 110,000-square-foot John Tickle Engineering Building took place on December 1, 2009.
“Education is the key for taking this state and our nation forward,” Tickle says. “In academics, like athletics, to get the best we have to have the best facilities.”
The new space will include technologically advanced classroom and laboratory space, along with offices for staff and faculty members and graduate students. A unique feature of the building is the pedestrian bridge that will connect the John Tickle Building to the heart of the campus. Construction on the building is expected to begin in late 2010, with completion projected for 2013.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Finally, $20 million in federal funding was secured for a new building to house the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials, a UT–ORNL partnership for advanced multidisciplinary research focused on the newest materials systems. As national leaders in the field of materials research, the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences will be key beneficiaries of this initiative.
Current plans are to construct this building on the university’s new Cherokee Campus, located on the banks of the Tennessee River just a few minutes from the main campus. Preliminary design work on the site and the building began in 2009.
“All three buildings provide new space that is badly needed for the rapidly expanding research programs of both the college and the university, as well as the educational needs of our undergraduate and graduate students,” says Wayne Davis, dean of the college. “We are indebted to our friends and alumni for helping us build for the future.”
