Wright State currently has plans to redevelop the basement of the Russ Engineering Center into an innovation lab, which would be named the Ronald D. Bullock/Bison Gear Innopreneurship Laboratory.
The project, which will cost a total of two million, is to be funded in part by a philanthropic gift from Ronald D. Bullock, alumnus of the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Given the recent budgetary situation the college does not anticipate direct university dollars to complete this project, according to Nathan Klingbeil, professor and dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. It is seeking public funding to cover the remaining one million.
Bullock’s gift includes an endowed faculty position -- that means that curriculum would be designed around, and be taught by a faculty member trained in “the scholarship of design and innovation,” according to Klingbeil.
The lab will be “a design and innovation space where students can take concepts all the way from an idea to an actual product,” said Klingbeil. “The whole idea is to create a shared space for interdisciplinary projects.”
Another focus of the laboratory is to promote entrepreneurship. The College of Engineering has been developing the lab with the Raj Soin College of Business.
Through discussions with Bullock, the College of Engineering aligned its own needs with his passion “to produce the types of engineers that the manufacturing community needs: people who don’t just have books skills, but people […] with the ability to make, design, build, and even think about the business plan,” said Klingbeil.
The gift agreement was put into place since 2014. Designing phases of the lab were started shortly after the agreement was signed; the lab was originally expected to be completed in the summer of 2016. The delay has been caused by the university holding off on new construction projects, as well as the passing of the donor and the estate settlement process, according to Klingbeil.
Currently there is no definitive timeline for the completion of the project. Since it would be difficult to complete a project of this scale during the academic year, it is anticipated to be completed during the summer of either 2018 or 2019, according to Klingbeil. “It’s an exciting project [that] has been a long time coming,” he said.
