College of Sciences Newsletter

Edition 9

January 1, 2002

Groundbreaking Ceremony

A groundbreaking ceremony for the new Engineering and Computational Sciences building was held on December 14, 2001 on the Quarantine Road lawn.

Earlier in the fall, Governor Jim Gilmore and the General Assembly approved $13 million for the new Engineering and Computational Sciences building. Construction will begin spring 2002 and be completed by fall 2003. The new facility will house not only Old Dominion’s new Center for Computational Sciences, which will draw researchers from both science and engineering departments, it will also house three academic departments - aerospace engineering, math and statistics and computer science. It will have an auditorium, several simulation and computer labs and the University’s computing office. The College of Sciences’ CAVE will be located here, too.

The L-shaped, 83,000-square-foot building will have four floors and sit between the Monarch Gardens, outside Webb Center, and Elkhorn Avenue next to the Oceanography and Physics Building. This will be the first time that all of the academic departments of the College of Sciences will be together. The four buildings (Alfriend Chemistry, Mills Godwin, Ocean/Physics, and the new Engineering and Computational Sciences) will form a science quadrangle.

The research and instruction conducted in this new facility are expected to boost the number of graduates qualified for high-tech fields. President Roseann Runte believes it will attract more top students and faculty, thus producing the level of high-tech graduates needed to fill jobs locally and across Virginia. It is also believed the facility will attract high-tech companies to the area to be near the center.

President Runte, along with the Board of Visitors break ground on the Engineering and Computational Sciences Building.
This sign marks the spot, adjacent to Webb Center, where the Engineering and Computational Sciences Building will be built.