The Kelley Engineering Center

Transcript of Keynote speech by Jen-Hsun Huang

View a 360° Panorama of the KEC atrium. (Requires Quicktime)

The College of Engineering’s drive to become one of the nation’s top-25 engineering programs is experiencing major momentum in the form of a new, high-tech engineering center located at the heart of campus.

The four-story, 153,000-sq.-ft., $45 million Kelley Engineering Center was funded by a $20 million gift from OSU Engineering alumnus Martin Kelley (1950, CE), $20 million in public funds authorized by the Oregon legislature, and $5 million being raised the OSU Foundation.

"The Kelley Engineering Center is the crown jewel of the Top-25 Campaign," said Dean Ron Adams. "Architecturally, it embodies our emphasis on an engineering education that is centered around extraordinary people working together to create the ideas and innovation necessary to build a better future."

Featuring sustainable "green" design elements, the new building includes wireless classrooms, flexible learning laboratories, office clusters, and common areas that encourage communication including, "plug-and-learn" alcoves built into spaces often underutilized in traditional building designs and a centrally located E-café where faculty, staff, students, and industry partners can gather to share ideas.

Exterior, south-east entrance.

The Kelley Engineering Center houses the rapidly growing School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, providing labs, classrooms, and offices for more than 360 professors and graduate students.

OSU has grown into the 23rd-largest engineering school in the nation, according to Dean, Ron Adams. "And as we continue to build a nationally ranked program, we will continue to grow. The timing for the new building could not be better."

As the College builds a top-25 program, it is emphasizing collaborative, innovative teaching and research that involves not only OSU faculty, staff, and students, but long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with people from industry as well. "The new building is sited to facilitate easy access from Monroe Avenue for business visitors, which reflects our emphasis on developing greater bridges to industry,” Adams says.

In a dramatic departure from most other academic engineering buildings, the labs in the new building are not dedicated to individual faculty members. Instead, each lab will be the central element of a "research-learning suite” surrounded by faculty and graduate student offices and assigned to a specific research project. The building will also contain two large theater-style classrooms, two “reconfigurable” class/conference rooms, and nine seminar-classrooms.

The Kelley Engineering Center was designed by the Portland architecture firm Yost Grube Hall and is being built by Baugh/Skanska, an Oregon firm based in Portland.