Students stoked to study in CEI building

Stroll through Essex Hall, chat with any engineering students and besides their usual scholastic pursuits, the one thing they’re most preoccupied with these days is all of the anticipation and excitement surrounding the new Centre for Engineering Innovation.

“I’m really pumped,” said Garain (Gaz) Bryden, a second-year automotive engineering student originally from Suffolk, England. “When I see the amount of progress they’ve made since last year I think the building looks awesome.”

With the first phase of the $112 million facility scheduled to open for limited use this spring—the second and final phase will open in the fall of 2012—students are chomping at the bit to get in and get busy. Jil Amine gets stoked every time he walks past the construction site or checks in on the building’s progress via the live web cam on the university’s CEI Web site.

“You get so excited, you just can’t wait for the building to just be done and you moving into it and using all the equipment that’s going to be in there,” said Amine, a third-year electrical engineering student originally from Lebanon. “I’m considering doing a master’s just so I can say that I worked in that building.”

Touted as a major step forward for both the University and the Windsor-Essex region, the 300,000 square foot facility will provide labs and research facilities where emerging priorities such as environmental sustainability, alternative energy, nanostructure, lighter materials, and efficient manufacturing can be addressed. Designed by B+H Architects, the centre will be LEED certified for its environmentally friendly construction and will be a “living” building where students will learn about engineering concepts from its numerous, built-in functions such as pedestrian bridges equipped with load-measuring sensors.

The building will include an industrial courtyard that will team the university, businesses and other partners in an environment to facilitate a direct connection between education, research, and industrial innovation. That’s one feature that really ignites Sarah Drake’s imagination.

“I think it’ll really help businesses to have student input because I feel like students really have a lot of great ideas for these companies,” said the fifth-year student who has been actively involved with the student engineering society since her second year.

Fourth-year civil engineering student Ryan Hunt is particularly enthused about the building because he’s been on site to learn about concrete design and installation as part of his co-op work placement with PCR Contractors, one of the companies working on the CEI.

“It’s one thing to learn in class and learn all the theory but it’s hard to put an image to it so when you actually get to go out on site and learn from the construction and learn from the building it’s been very useful and I think it will help me in my career,” he said.