At today’s Board of Regents meeting, the board heard a report explaining the scope and rationale for a project that will expand and upgrade the Dorothy Westerman Herrmann Science Center.
The report, given by Provost Diana McGill, Senior Director of Planning, Design and Construction Mary Paula Schuh, Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Science Bethany Bowling and Assistant Vice President of Facilities Management Syed Zaidi, attributed the need for the project to shortages in space and equipment that hamper growth in research and student recruitment in natural science programs.
The money for the project comes from a $79.9 million capital investment approved by the Kentucky General Assembly in the 2023-2024 biennial budget.
Zaidi said that when the Science Center was built in 2002, “limitations in state funding caused substantial reductions in the project scope, thus, from the very beginning, it was clear that the building was inadequate even to meet the needs, even when it opened.” He said that given those initial compromises, it was understood that the building would eventually need to be expanded.
“Even with an addition to the Science Center, NKU will still lag behind regional peers and benchmark institutions in space allocated to teaching STEM+H. Not addressing this could jeopardize our enrollment,” said Zaidi.
This project was the first priority project listed in NKU’s 2020 Master Plan. Master plans are completed about every 10 years and updated throughout the decade as a best practice, according to Zaidi.
The programs housed in the Science Center are some of the fastest growing at NKU. Interim Dean Bowling said that the three engineering technology programs offered at NKU are the highest enrollment numbers compared to the same programs at other four-year institutions in Kentucky. She added that degrees awarded in STEM+H–which stands for science, technology, engineering, math plus health–increased nearly 90% between 2019 and 2023.
Specialized spaces and equipment are necessary for teaching STEM+H programs and conducting research in these disciplines, said Bowling. Many of the tenure-track faculty in these programs have received or are currently seeking funding for research through grant proposals, she said. In these proposals, writers must disclose the amount of space and equipment available to them.
“We have been extremely creative in carving out research space in the existing building, but we are out of space left to convert and carve out,” said Bowling. “These research, senior capstone and teaching lab, hands-on experiences are the differentiators that help our students be successful in their careers.”
According to Zaidi, the Science Center was built before the engineering technology (EGT) program was introduced to the College of Arts and Sciences. EGT programs reside in the Business Academic Center, a facility not designed for these programs. The expanded building is expected to comprise teaching and research labs for the EGT program.
Provost McGill added that creating space in the Science Center for EGT would free up space for growth in College of Business programs.
“Our partners are clamoring for more graduates with these skills. To better prepare our students for the workforce, we must upgrade our spaces with the most up to date technologies. We don’t have the space to accomplish this goal and we need this expansion to stay competitive with universities that are able to upgrade,” McGill said about the potential growth in EGT programs that would be enabled by the renovation.
McGill also posited that the expansion of the upgraded facility would improve community outreach events for young students, parents and high schools and pitch NKU as an apt place to go for higher education. Schuh, the Senior Director of Planning, Design and Construction, said the proposed design includes a new outreach center for K-12 engagement.
According to Schuh, the 2020 Master Plan found a need for 85,000 more square feet of space dedicated to natural science programs, such as research labs, teaching labs, central study spaces and faculty offices. “The proposed addition is in fact 85,000 square feet at this time,” she said.
Schuh went on to say that when compared to other regional institutions in Kentucky–excluding Kentucky State University–the amount of space devoted to natural science at NKU is 42% of the average. The building’s expansion as it sits now would vault that figure up to 64% of the average.
Schuh cited another metric pointing to the need for more research space. According to a biennial survey by the National Science Foundation that asks institutions about the size and condition of their research facilities, NKU hovers near the bottom of the ranking, coming in at 461st out of 584 respondents in 2021.
The expansion will add 9,000 square feet of research space, the sum of which would give NKU 3.2 square feet of research space per student, said Schuh, which is “below all Kentucky regionals and all but three of NKU’s 26 national and SACs benchmark institutions.”
Schuh said that on top of upgrades and expansions to study spaces, labs and classrooms, the hope is that the $79.9 million budget is enough to cover the cost to replace existing building systems, such as air handlers, exhaust systems and more.
Schuh presented current renderings for the expansion plan, which can be seen in the photo gallery at the top of this story.
A construction manager for the project has been selected, according to Schuh. “Bidding is planned for late summer, and a ground-breaking ceremony could happen in the September-October time frame. Construction is expected to take 30 months,” she said. As of now, completion of the project is predicted for spring of 2027.
Zaidi warned that the current plan is subject to change because of rising construction costs that the team must heed to stay within the budget.
“These are the architects’ hopes and dreams, and then we take scissors and say, ‘I don’t think so.’ And that’s where it hurts, and this is what happened previously, and we believe we still need to do some cutting in what we have today based on the budget that we have,” Zaidi said.