The new building would replace five of seven existing engineering buildings on the campus- Crawford, Gilbreth, Kelly and Wales Halls, and Kelley Hall Annex. Bliss Hall and the Kirk building would remain as is with possible future renovations.

           

Space in the new buildings would be large enough to accommodate many uses such as, classrooms, laboratories and research instead of just the one use like many of the classrooms do now. 

           

Raymond Wright, Dean of the College of Engineering says that the buildings were built to handle the type of technology used in the late 50s and early 60s and now everything has changed. URI has state of the art equipment for the engineers but the rooms are not able to handle them.

           

An architect said that the old buildings could not be renovated and they have long outlived their life expectancy of about 50 years.

           

The new buildings would be able to accommodate an 18 percent increase in student enrollment; the college has seen the number of undergraduates grow by about 39 percent over the last 10 years.

           

The College of Engineering enrolls 1,316 undergraduate students and 231 graduate students. In the Class of 2013 about 70 percent of the students were from Rhode Island, and more then 4,000 engineering alumni live in Rhode Island and work for about 750 places in the state. The faculty and alumni has founded 28 or more Rhode Island companies.

 

FM Global has recently invested 1 million dollars into this project. The comany hires 10-15 interns from URI each year, these students often are able to stay with the company when the internship ends. FM Global has been a parter with the college of engineering for years. The university is extremley greatful with there commitment to hire students. 

           

The new engineering building can be a big part of the future of Rhode Island. Engineers are a part of getting Rhode Islands 7.7 percent employment rate out of where it is and helping people find jobs.