Today, 315 of Mount Union’s roughly 2,300 undergraduate students are majoring in EABA programs, and 100 are pursuing minors in business, accounting, or economics. The engineering program has grown rapidly in the past several years, now serving 200 students and preparing for further growth. To accommodate this growth, and to provide an outstanding environment for teaching and learning, an engineering design studio/fabrication lab, engineering and business collaboration lab, and large business classrooms need to be added to the existing building.
The physical proximity of the University’s business and engineering programs in the EBB is not an accident. The University has actively worked to foster connections between the two programs. A focus on “making” is a lynchpin of that connection. Students in the University’s robust entrepreneurship program partner with engineering students to develop prototypes of new products, learning in the process the practicalities of creating new products. Engineers, in turn, develop a sense of the real world constraints that exist in the world of business; an engineering solution isn’t a business solution until it successfully addresses constraints of budget, timeline, and deliverables.
Today, growth in these two areas continues.
Within the Department of Economics, Accounting, and Business Administration, a new program in risk management and insurance studies has been added. The program responds to a national shortage of college graduates who are trained for careers in the insurance industry, an industry with a significant employer presence in Ohio.
On the engineering front, the University has launched three new engineering majors – electrical engineering, computer engineering, and biomedical engineering – which join the institution’s already-successful and ABET-accredited programs in civil engineering and mechanical engineering. To accommodate expected growth in its engineering program, the University must create classroom, lab, and office space for additional faculty and for almost 200 new undergraduate engineers.
To properly accommodate and maintain adjacency and synergies between its programs in business and engineering, Mount Union has developed a two-fold plan.
Technology-Enriched Classroom Suite in the Engineering and Business Building Addition
- Flexible “maker space”
- Flexible classroom space for instruction and group projects
- Digital hub for online business instruction
Renovations in the Engineering and Business Building and Tolerton-Hood Hall
- Engineering labs
- Seminar rooms
- Faculty offices
- Auxiliary and support spaces
