Kiewit Hall, the new 181,500-square-foot home of undergraduate engineering education, will open on Jan. 22 to students. Throughout the six-story facility, nearly half of the interior walls are glass.
JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star
Kiewit Hall, the new 181,500-square-foot home of undergraduate engineering education, will open on Jan. 22 to students. Throughout the six-story facility, nearly half of the interior walls are glass.
Lance Pérez wants to change the narrative about engineers and the work they do.
The dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said the image many have of the engineer is somebody sitting alone in a cubicle, staring at plans for roads or bridges on a computer screen that needs a refresh.
“The truth is (engineering) is about improving the human condition,” said Pérez, who recently was named the inaugural recipient of the Fred Hunzeker deanship. “That’s really what engineers are doing — trying to make the world better for people.”
On Jan. 22, when Kiewit Hall opens to students, the new 181,500-square-foot home of undergraduate engineering education will mark a breakthrough in changing that understanding of engineers and engineering, Pérez said.
More than 70% of the ground floor — which boasts a maker space, the Kiewit Café featuring Mediterranean foods, and student lounges — is transparent and can be seen by pedestrians and motorists passing by its location at 17th and Vine streets on UNL’s City Campus.
Throughout the six-story facility, 46% of the interior walls are glass, while 96% of the regularly occupied rooms — 176 offices, collaborative work spaces, etc. — are visible from public spaces or corridors.
“So many academic buildings are built where these classrooms are so closed off from everything, and yet, that’s the most important thing we do,” Pérez said. “Why not make that visible? Why not let people see our faculty teaching and see how our students interact in the classrooms?
“What engineers do is cool, right? It’s important and we want people to be able to see it,” he added.
The centerpiece of the basement and first floors is what college administrators are calling “the Garage,” a maker space complete with a woodshop, CNC machine, 3D printer, and other equipment, such as a crane to hoist engines and other heavy items.
The Garage is also where the roughly 50 registered student organizations for rocketry, Baja racing and other engineering-related clubs will have small office spaces and work benches — all of which are visible.
That deep involvement led to the building featuring long sightlines, open spaces, and areas for collaboration that are all part of the strategy to elevate not only UNL’s College of Engineering, but the engineering profession across the country, according to Wilson.
Massive classrooms on either side of a 14,700-square-foot public event space on the main floor of Kiewit Hall are packed with the latest technology to accommodate between 60 and 150 students, depending on the needs of the class.
Each classroom is flexible, meaning the tables and chairs can be moved and rearranged to fit the learning goals of each course, as well as visible behind 16-foot-tall glass panels, which puts “engineers on display,” according to Wilson, who is also a professor of architecture at UNL.
Nearly 32,000 square feet of teaching labs on the third floor will allow current and prospective students to witness hands-on learning in real time, while small collaborative spaces offer places for studying or working on group projects.
Faculty and staff in construction management will move into a fourth-floor office suite that occupies most of the south side of the building, while on the fifth floor, the college’s student support and engineering student services will make their new home.
The top floor will feature the dean’s office suite, which looks onto City Campus to the southwest, an outdoor patio high above Vine Street, and a board room with a table that can seat 40 people.
The building’s HVAC and mechanical systems, which have earned Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, are also housed on the sixth floor. The design of the building has also earned International WELL Building Institute Silver certification, signaling a workplace optimized for health and well-being.
“If you’re going to build an engineering building, it should be high performing,” Pérez said.
Connecting the first floor and the sixth is a grand staircase which, in a display of the power of engineering, is hung from the ceiling of the massive atrium rather than supported from the ground. And coating the walls is a special plastic designed to minimize the echoes in the enormous space.
The facility, which was named for Kiewit Corp., the Omaha-based construction firm that made the lead donation of $25 million, will connect to the rest of the College of Engineering’s facilities on City Campus.
Once it opens, students, faculty, staff and others will be able to walk from the north end of Nebraska Hall at 16th and X streets, through the Engineering Research Center, Scott Engineering Center and Othmer Hall into Kiewit Hall in a matter of minutes.
The integrated engineering complex will symbolically connect disciplines ranging from mechanical engineering to environmental engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering to construction management, Pérez said.
A majority of the classes — no matter the discipline — will take place in Kiewit Hall, however, as it becomes the home to undergraduate education.
Pérez said the new facility will become the home of a new student convocation and senior design showcase, create spaces for receptions and be a recruiting tool. On Feb. 10, for example, the College of Engineering will host 500 high school students for a statewide robotics competition.
“We never could have done that with our previous facilities,” Pérez said.
The college’s current enrollment is 3,413 undergrad students and 654 graduate students. Pérez has announced plans to grow enrollment to 5,000 students by 2030.
Kiewit Hall will play a part in helping with that growth, he said. The college has heard stories of students who have decided to apply to UNL after seeing the building under construction.
But, he said, the building is one piece of the puzzle.
Pérez said the College of Engineering will continue looking for ways to better support students through scholarships, improving retention and graduation outcomes, even as it looks for ways to make engineering and engineering education more visible to the public.
“There’s more work to be done to get us to that goal, but this is a really important piece,” he said. “It’s changing who we are.”
Photos: UNL's Kiewit Hall seeks to be premiere engineering education facility
Kiewit Hall, the new 181,500-square-foot home of undergraduate engineering education, will open on Jan. 22 to students. Throughout the six-story facility, nearly half of the interior walls are glass.
Kiewit Hall, the new 181,500-square-foot home of undergraduate engineering education, will open on Jan. 22 to students. Throughout the six-story facility, nearly half of the interior walls are glass.