The groundbreaking ceremony for the new building will be Friday, October 14 at 1 p.m. The $16 million facility will be located between -- and offer connections to -- the Eberhard Center and Keller Engineering Laboratories. The three-story, 51,800 square foot building will house classrooms, offices and labs.
The Padnos College of Engineering and Computing is a success story for Grand Valley, giving students the education they need to hit the ground running in their careers. The program has been growing rapidly -- about 700 students enrolled in 2005, up from 500 in 2000. In the job market, Grand Valley engineering students have a nearly 100 percent placement rate every year. Between 96-100 percent of Grand Valley students pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam each year, while the national rate hovers around 70 percent. That exam a requirement to become licensed.
Students get professional experience along with their studies through a cooperative education program that provides real-world opportunities with local companies. The co-op work is woven with classroom work through the junior and senior years.
The students also learn how to be responsible citizens in the program. Professor Shirley Fleischmann spearheads projects that teach engineering principles while helping improve the neighborhoods surrounding Grand Valley's downtown campus. Students learned about heat transfer by insulating a home owned by The Other Way Ministries. And each semester, Grand Valley students invite 5th graders from the nearby Sibley Elementary into the engineering labs for an event, exposing them to a university and to the dream of a college education and teaching them lessons about engineering.
