The newly renovated 35,000-square-foot Engineering Lab on the Kennesaw State University Marietta campus was unveiled during an opening ceremony at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 30.
The lab, previously the G Building, opened a newly renovated 3D print center, a new location for the Collaborative Learning for Undergraduate Engineering center, an advising center and a flexible robotics research space. The Engineering Lab building was last renovated in 1984, 22 years after it was originally built.
The CLUE center, located in room G237, connects students together for peer-to-peer mentoring and has seen improvement in student performance in classes supported by the center. According to Kevin Tran, tour guide and senior mechanical engineering major, more than 360 students used the center in the last year, a 20% increase from the previous year.
The advising center houses the offices of 13 advisors that serve close to 5,000 students. Both undergraduate and graduate research is active in the new additions to the building, as well as external researchers, like from Georgia Pavement who work in room G120.
The 3D print center is open to student use for class and senior design projects and is in room G130. The lab contains under 40 printers now but is expecting an upgrade in the next month to install new shelving as well as close to 35 new printers that are capable of finer layer printing.
The ceremony opened with a welcome from Ivan Ferguson, dean of the engineering college. President Kathy Schwaig followed with remarks on the importance of space and expansion in a post-COVID setting.
“It’s part of this integrated model of showing students that learning isn’t just what’s happening in the classrooms,” Ferguson said. “It’s really about the ability to be able take that and to work and to see the next generation work on.”
Mechanical engineering major Anthony Tetrault also gave a speech on the significance of the building from his perspective as a student. Tetrault recently had a research paper accepted for an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference.
“This is where I learned beyond theory and beyond memorization of academia,” Tetrault said. “It’s where I learned how to work with a team, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. This is where I learned that I am an engineer.”
After the ceremony, tours were given by Tetrault and Tran.
Tran is working on his own senior research project that he works on in the Engineering Lab building. His lab works on compliant and flexible robotics, such as in locomotive and swimming robots with Professor Ayse Tekes.
“It’s like asking a friend, or a fellow student ‘How do I solve this? How do I figure it out?’ so it’s very friendly,” Tran said about the CLUE center. “It’s not as stressful as going up to a teacher to ask for something.”
The Marietta campus’ last renovation was to first-year residence building Howell Hall in August 2021.
