By Gia Pham
About 70 students etched their names into the final construction beam of the new Interdisciplinary Science Building in black and blue sharpies Monday morning.
“This [beam] is going to be up on top of the building and, of course, it’s going to be incorporated into the structure. You won’t be able to see these names, but still, people feel they want to be connected to it,” said College of Science Dean Michael Kaufman. “I think the fact that so many people are showing up is an indication that there is a lot of pent up desire to have new facilities and people feel like they are part of it, which is great.”
The new building is projected to open in Spring 2022, Kaufman said.
Around $120 million of the funding for the project came from California State University trustees, as well as a combination of campus reserves and money from the College of Professional and Global Education, Kaufman said.
“We are on budget. We are on schedule, all is good,” said Charlie Faas, vice president of Administration and Finance.
The last academic structure built on campus was about 30 years ago and like most buildings on campus, it was designed for traditional classroom experiences or office spaces, Faas said.
However, the building will feature instruction and research labs on each floor, as well as dedicated collaboration spaces conjoining the two. The collaboration spaces are designed to advance SJSU’s academic excellence and teaching methods, Kaufman said.
“We have a lot of new faculty who are both committed to the research that we are going to build into this building and are very interested in being in a place like SJSU, which has a lot of first-gen students, essentially helping to move people up into good careers,” Kaufman said.
He said another feature of the building will be flexible collaboration spaces in the northeast corner of the building where students and faculty can meet up formally or informally.
Fellow students can work side by side with SJSU faculty on original research.
A floor and a half will be dedicated to programs from the College of Professional and Global Education, Kaufman said.
“It resonates with employers to say,
‘[SJSU is] teaching in the 21st century, they are teaching in the future, they are teaching for our needs,’ ” Faas said.
The building is part of a new campus master plan that will evaluate other buildings on campus and innovate spaces that are outdated, Faas said.
“This is just the beginning,” Kaufman said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve invested in academic buildings at this campus, this happens to be the first of those, but you’re going to see expansion in other areas of the
university as well.”
The entirely glass-exterior, eight-story building will have the letters “SJSU” in silver, which Faas said, will catch the eyes of passengers on incoming airplanes landing at the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport.
“It’s going to be very obvious what our campus is, so people will be able to see that as they are flying into one of the highest growing airports in the country right now,” Faas said. “This is going to be a statement building on campus. It’s going to be a statement building in the
city of San Jose and it’s a statement building for the whole California State University system.”
Kinesiology senior Maxine Gutierrez, who plans to graduate at the end of the spring semester, was one of the many students who signed the beam.
“There’s a lot of new students every year and it’ll be great to have more space for students to learn,” Gutierrez said.
Under her name, Gutierrez signed “Spartan Quidditch” to instill the building with the sense of community she found from the club sport.
She said adding that to the beam would be a good luck charm which will welcome and comfort future students, reassuring them that they too will find their home at SJSU.
“It’s been my home on campus where I made the most friends,” Gutierrez said.
