In case you missed it, Mercyhurst College broke ground last weekend on a new 9 million dollar building that will house the intel studies and the hotel and restaurant management studies programs.There are lots of stories about it in the press and the whole event is linked to the alumni Facebook page and Mercyhurst's main site but I am aware that many of my readers and our friends and alumni may not be frequent visitors to those places (ahem...) which is why I decided to cover it here as well.
The bottomline is that the "new building" (that we have been talking about since almost the day I came to campus eight years ago) is a reality. We should occupy the new premises in the fall of 2012.
(For those of you who still don't believe it, see the picture at the left of Prof. Breckenridge personally engaged in the manual labor necessary to make this happen. We would have put Bob Heibel to work as well, by the way, but he was in Madrid at a conference...)
If you look at the picture of the facility at the top of the page, intel will fully occupy the top two floors. The hotel and restaurant management department will have its kitchens and classrooms in the ground floor (not visible in this picture). The first floor will have a number of shared facilities and classrooms.
(By the way, the GREAT thing about having the hotel and restaurant management department in the building is that it should eliminate the need to live off of food from the vending machines.)
The skybridge in the picture connects the new building to the library. Most of Center for Intelligence Research, Analysis and Training (CIRAT) will be in the fourth floor of the library. In addition, the bridge is designed to be a bit of a destination location itself. It will be extra wide and have chairs and other features that will make it appropriate for small receptions or as a place to study or eat lunch.
While the financing has been secured for the building, we wouldn't be a good college if we weren't looking for more donors and sponsors. So, if you want to support the fine work we do here everyday or if you just want your name on the laser cannons we have planned for the roof (not visible in this picture...), get out your checkbooks and go here!
How exciting! Looks great :)
ReplyDeleteShannon,
ReplyDeleteIt is actually pretty awesome. Some of the features on the inside are going to make it even better. We have built into it some hi-tech presentation spaces and there will be designated project work rooms for strategic, CIRAT and other projects. The whole building is going to have the highest fiber optic capacities we can get and all the technology is specifically designed so we can easily upgrade whenever we need to. On another, important but unrelated note, it is also likely to have the finest wine cellar of any intel building in the country!
Kris
Can I come back for round 2? ;)
ReplyDeleteShannon,
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome back any time! We are going to start working on a doctorate program once we get university status. You might really want to think about it then.
Kris
Sorry, it isn't an "INTEL STUDIES BUILDING"... It will house many other programs and institutes!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteYour point is well taken. It will house other programs though the largest of these will be the intel studies department in terms of number of students and in terms of amount of space in the new building dedicated to intel. From the standpoint of the traditional readership of this blog, it made sense to highlight intel studies. My apologies -- no offense intended.
Kris