Tech’s Engineering Building Nearing Completion

Tennessee Tech’s new Ashraf Islam Engineering Building is set to be completed and turned over to faculty late July.

College of Engineering Dean Joseph Slater said they will begin the move-in process quickly in order to prepare portions of the building for use in the upcoming fall semester. Slater said the building will serve as a central hub where everyone in the college goes, but few faculty will have offices and reside there.

“The college has been undergoing unprecedented growth in our enrollments, in our programs, and in our research, and so we need this building even more than we needed it when we first proposed it,” Slater said. “So we’re very excited to have this opportunity.”

Slater said they will not be using the whole building in the fall and will be moving things into the new building over the next year and a half to two years. He said classrooms will be set up quickly, but they have a large number of complicated areas and labs that require much more coordination to transfer over.

“We have to set those labs up,” Slater said. “It’s sophisticated equipment, we need the technicians there, but the same people who are going to be installing those labs and making them work are already doing that in the current lab, so we have to support the students in the place where we are right now and move into the building. So it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge to move in while the semester is going.”

He said this is the kind of facility that will transform the College of Engineering by allowing them to host new events support more students.

“It will also help build the culture of the college by creating a common space where we all can gather together in a place that is within the College of Engineering,” Slater said.

Slater said the only work left on the building is a series of safety tests and multiple small items like a portion of the sidewalk. Slater said anyone in the community who is interested should come see the building after it opens.

“Once it’s open, I would give it another two months until there are some things in there,” Slater said. “We won’t have furniture in all places, but you can walk through, and I think you’ll see that it is a beautiful building that has a lot of opportunities for our students,” Slater said.