President's Perspective
By Stan Liberty
President, Kettering University
Last year, at alumni events in both Canada and the U.S., several alums asked me if we could run a “then and now” story in “Kettering Perspective” to illustrate how the campus has changed over the years. So, here it is—a quick look at the facilities of yesteryear and those of today. The cover story in this edition blends images from GMI’s old campus with photos of some of our most modern facilities, like the newly dedicated Dane and Mary Louise Miller Life Sciences and Bio-Engineering Laboratories. But, what about the future?
In support of our overall strategic planning we have updated the campus master plan and have determined the specific sites for anticipated new facilities. That master plan has not yet been presented to our board of trustees so I cannot display it here. However, I will briefly describe some of its features. Locations of future academic facilities have been determined as has the area to be developed as Kettering’s “research park.” The anchor facility in that “park” will be a Science and Technology Laboratory Incubator Building. Construction of this facility will begin this year and the facility will be ready for occupancy in spring of 2009. We had a ceremonial groundbreaking for this building this past October (see brief coverage of this in the third feature of this interactive edition or on pages 16-17 of the print edition of the magazine or visit Kettering’s website at: http://www.kettering.edu/visitors/storydetail.jsp?storynum=626 to view more detail about this exciting project).
A key objective in our strategic plan is to increase the amount of student housing on campus – both university and Greek housing. Sites for these facilities have also been determined. By increasing the number of students residing on or very near the campus, we will be able to enhance overall learning and provide a rich set of student life experiences. A key facility (mentioned in my summer 2007 column) supporting this objective is a new student center/library. Here is a conceptual rendering of this facility that shows it located in the “beach” area of campus, but that is not where it is sited in our master plan.
As you can tell, these are exciting times at Kettering University. I hope that all of you will have an opportunity in the future to visit the campus again and experience some of this excitement.
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810 762-9538 voice; 810 762-7435 fax; gerwin@kettering.edu