The Campaign for Engineering: Ohio Northern’s new Engineering Facility

The original Ohio Northern Engineering Building

The engineering program at Ohio Northern University has been outgrowing its current facilities for years. The current facility that houses the engineering facility is the Biggs Engineering building. The Biggs building was finished and dedicated in 1970, and was the first building to be built on campus exclusively for the engineering program. The engineering program was initially housed in the Hill Building at the front of Ohio Northern’s campus. The program moved into the building in 1936, after the building had caught fire and been remodeled twice. After 1953, the university purchased the Ada High School Building after the town had finished construction on a new facility in 1952. The 18 classroom building required extensive renovations to the heating and sanitation systems in order for it to actually be usable as an academic facility. The program was housed in this building for almost 20 years before the construction and dedication of the Biggs building.

The engineering college at Ohio Northern has been housed in Biggs since 1972. Over the years, the building has gone through expansions and reorganizations in order to make roo
m for growing program sizes as well as the addition of departments such as computer science. The main expansion done to the building occurred with the addition of the science annex connecting the Biggs Engineering Building with the Meyer Hall for the Sciences. This added on a large lecture hall, computer labs and offices for the heads of the electrical and mechanical engineering departments. The addition freed up space for new classroom space as well as a student lounge for use by the engineering students. However, the engineering programs have outgrown their current facilities in the Biggs building.

The Biggs Engineering Building and current home of the
college of engineering.

Space in the Biggs Engineering Building has gotten quite cramped with the constant expansion of the engineering departments. The space in the building has gotten so limited that some of the engineering clubs have been moved into the basement of the building. The Baja club has moved their component storage and half of their work area into the basement of the building, along with the storage for the human powered vehicle team. The aero design team has been confined to the corner of a room that is meant to serve as a common area for all engineering students. The common rooms of the college have also lately been subdivided in order to make room for the senior capstone projects being constructed in the spring semester. The teams that do actually have their own space also do not have enough room. The concrete canoe team is limited to a hallway that is between a lab and the computer and technology offices. The hallway itself is barely wide and long enough for the canoe to be housed, let alone for the cables used as a framework in the canoe to be tensioned to the appropriate force safely.

The new engineering building concept. 

With all of this in mind, the university has acquired funding for the construction of a new facility. The new facility has been designed and modeled based on input from the current students as well as projections for the growth of the programs housed in the building. Fundraising for the new building began after the plans for the new building were approved by the administration of the university. The building has been projected to cost approximately 30 million dollars, and consist of enough space to house all of the clubs and associations safely. The building design is also meant to incorporate concepts that current students and studies about academic spaces alike believe the current facilities are missing. The main thing the architects have incorporated into the new b
uilding is the presence of open spaces and an abundance of windows. The new building also incorporates an open air atrium, and three floors of classroom space and faculty offices. The new building also eliminate hallways and replaces them with collaborative spaces consisting of seating areas and whiteboards for students to work with one another. The new building will serve as a collaborative and open space for future engineering students to obtain an education as well as encourage cross disciplinary work in engineering groups. The building will begin construction in the summer of 2018, and will become the official engineering facility for the engineering department.