Umass Lowell: What an Exciting Change
It’s Tim here and today we are going to talk about the exciting changes that both the city of Lowell and the University of Massachusetts Lowell are going to be taking together by 2020. Although not many university students may be aware, but the City of Lowell is going to make a remarkable change over the next couple of years. Before I bore you with the minute intricacies of the changes. How about a video instead?
The Lowell Plan
As you can see, there is a lot to be changed and a lot to be developed and a lot of excitement to feel for the amazing changes that are going to effect all of us. As much as I complain that I have lived in Lowell my entire live and it is true that I do get sick of Lowell sometimes, I still love it here. Lowell will always be my hometown and the place I grew up and the place I have spent all of my academic life.
I feel as if there is a lot of confusion across campus of what exactly is happening to our University. Hopefully that video answered some questions for you, but I want to go further and explain what the new buildings and construction will function as. I’m going to break down each construction site and explain its purpose.
After spending a very long time trying to mash together all of the changes going on at Umass Lowell, I realized this blog was going to be extremely long. Therefore, it will be in all of our interests for me to break this up into an epic 3 part series of awesomeness. First up:
North Campus: Engineering Awesome
The Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center
As most of you have already probably noticed, this is the University’s newest building. Here is some info on the building from the UML website:
“The opening of the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center (ETIC) will mark the beginning of new scientific discovery and ground-breaking research at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The ETIC houses cutting-edge programs in nanomedicine, nanomanufacturing, plastics and elastomers, clean-room technologies, biomaterials develoment and more. These are fast-developing fields with growing career prospects and promising industry partnership opportunities.”
Fun Fact: The ETIC’s opening day was October 11, 2012.
The North Campus Garage
This is the new North Campus garage that has alleviated what used to be a huge parking problem on North Campus. This parking lot opened up this September and has already been a huge help. The UML website explains description goes:
” This five-tier garage, which opened in September 2012, has added more than 550 parking spaces to the North Campus parking inventory. The garage is not only a useful addition to the campus, but also an attractive one, with features not usually seen in such facilities.”
Fun Fact: This garage actually has restrooms located on the ground level.
The Pulichino Tong Business Building
The wind has been whispering rumors of a new business building for UML’s Manning School of Business. Well, here it is. The project begins this summer with the destruction of Eames Hall (sorry honor students, but you get to live in University Suites which I will talk about next week). The University’s description is as follows:
“A new building to house the Robert J. Manning School of Business is named for John Pulichino ’67 and his wife, Joy Tong, who donated $4 million to the University for scholarships. To give back to his alma mater amid their highly successful business careers, Pulichino and Tong recently created the Pulichino/Tong Family Foundation scholarship fund for students studying in the Manning School of Business. The Robert J. Manning School of Business in the new Pulichino Tong Business Building will offer students a world-class business education with the best facilities, including a trading room.”
Fun Fact: The manning School of Business was renamed last year because of Robert J. manning and Donna Manning who together made a multimillion-dollar commitment that will create more than $5 million in endowment to support ongoing initiatives for the new Manning School.
Well that’s all for this week. Next week I will be going over the changes to East Campus. So get ready for that. I hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend and you all better be at the game tonight supporting our D1 Hockey Team.
-Tim Brown