EV is home for grad students

By Laurie Zack

Calling it an “historic occasion,” Dean Nabil Esmail opened the first Faculty Council meeting in the new EV building last Friday. The October Senate meeting will also be held in the EV building as a trial for a possible relocation of Senate meetings to that building.

The building has received rave reviews from local media and city officials and the public seems to have adopted it as a stunning addition to the western downtown core.

Despite inevitable opening-week kinks, faculty and staff have adapted to a new faculty environment that creates new links and exchanges between areas.

The vertical campus concept has proven to be more than theoretical and the sun-drenched staircases have become an inner causeway for exchange and social interaction between floors.

Esmail explained that of the 660 rooms in the Engineering side of the complex, only 295 house faculty, staff or administrative offices. The other rooms are for graduate students.

In the past, the faculty was only able to welcome and house less than half of its graduate students. In the EV Building, there is space for all, including labs, lounges and other dedicated graduate studies rooms.

Of the 2,000 identity cards issued for the building, more than 1,700 are for graduate students.

On any given day, Esmail said, there are more than 1,200 graduate students spending from eight to nine hours in the building.

“This building probably houses the most concentrated collection of engineering and computer science expertise in the city,” Esmail said.

“The building is unique and to have so many creative thinkers in one building is also unique.”

The Faculty held a reception for the 535 new graduate students on Sept. 23, and a large number attended.

Laurie Zack