Engineering the Future

New equipment and building to help students excel in ever-evolving landscape

by Randy Weiler

MTSU’s engineering and technology students can’t wait for their $74.8 million Applied Engineering Building to open next year, providing custom space, equipment, and hands-on experience to prepare them for ever-changing careers.

They’re equally excited about more than $1 million in automation equipment that could be available as early as this fall.

Rising on the east side of campus next to the $40.1 million Concrete and Construction Management building, the 89,000-square-foot facility will house the renowned Mechatronics Engineering program and Engineering Technology. The engineering building also will provide enhanced student opportunities for faculty-led research and labs for student teams, including the Experimental Vehicles Program and robotics competitions.

The building’s opening by fall 2025 “will be the finishing touch to what we’ve named the Science Corridor of Innovation,” MTSU President Sidney McPhee said. The centerpiece of the corridor is the 250,000-square-foot Science Building, which opened in 2014 as the single largest investment by the state for an academic facility.

The engineering building “signifies a bridge across generations that is represented in the lives of current students and recent graduates—a bridge that is being forged by an active advisory board that is supporting stateof-the-art technology to ensure students can navigate a changing technological landscape,” said Ken Currie, chair of the Engineering Technology Department.

Even before the new building opens, students will soon utilize 10 FLEXBASE automation work centers transferred from Dexcom that are valued at $920,000. Automation Nth, based in La Vergne, has committed more than $100,000 in supplies and services to upgrade the units.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for engineering students to develop their skills with robotics for real-world industry experience and hands-on educational opportunities,” said Daniel Wetter, a rising junior Mechatronics Engineering major.

“I’m looking forward to the capabilities of our new building and the equipment that will allow us to further understand real-world robotics applications.”

Currie said this new equipment involves “totally integrated work cells with robotics, vision systems, and controls that need to be programmed to meet project limitations and constraints. . . . The beauty of these automation work cells is that each subsystem is modular and easily upgraded if machine learning or advancements in controls were to make quantum leaps forward.”

The new building will also have industry-inspired automation and fabrication labs, including the 2,000-square-foot Dexcom Automation Laboratory and 500-square-foot Automation Nth Vision Systems Lab that showcase these two companies.

This equipment and two robots on order—for the Gould Mechatronics Robotics Lab and the Co-Bot Workplace Development Center—will help “bridge the gap between industry and education,” Currie said.

There’s no time like the present to prepare for the future.

View video renderings of the Applied Engineering Building