BEREA, Ohio — Baldwin Wallace University on Saturday is breaking ground on the $25 million home of its STEM programs.
The Austin E. Knowlton Center, set to open in January 2021, will feature advanced computer and robotics laboratories, flexible classrooms that reflect real-world industry settings, and meeting spaces for students to work on projects. The 55,000-square-foot building will include data science, artificial intelligence, mathematical modeling, cyber security, engineering and physics disciplines.
The Austin E. Knowlton Foundation is donating $8 million to the center. Austin E. Knowlton, an Ohio businessman whose company built libraries, school buildings, hospitals and post offices across Ohio and the Midwest, created the foundation in 1981.
The Knowlton foundation works to advance higher education in the United States and provide grant money to colleges and universities.
“The Austin E. Knowlton Foundation is delighted to be a catalyst for this new phase of STEM education for Baldwin Wallace and its students,” said foundation treasurer Ed Diller in a news release. “The Austin E. Knowlton STEM Center will be more than a science building. It will be a place that transforms STEM education at Baldwin Wallace so that the university can prepare leaders equipped to address the pressing science, technology, engineering and math needs of the region.”
Other companies and foundations, including the Richfield-based software company OEC, the Harding Family Charitable Trust, FirstEnergy Foundation and FirstEnergy Corporation also contributed gifts to help pay for the new STEM center.
“BW is grateful to be joined by project partners who believe in the University’s ongoing vision to provide our growing number of STEM students the educational facilities and experiences they need,” Baldwin Wallace President Robert Helmer said in the news release.