New Engineering Building to be dedicated
The Utah State University College of Engineering has a new state-of-the-art engineering lab building thanks to the generosity of USU alum David G. Sant.
The David G. Sant Engineering Innovation Building will be dedicated Friday, June 13, at 2 p.m., on the Engineering Quad located west of the Engineering Building on the Southeast corner of campus. The event is free and open to the public and refreshments and building tours will follow the dedication ceremony. Parking is available at the USU parking terrace at 850 E. 700 North.
The new building has three floors totaling 38,000 square feet. Each floor has engineering laboratories of various sizes with modular bays, allowing labs to grow as needed. The cost of the lab building totals nearly $13 million.
Sant and his wife, Diann, have donated more than $6 million to support both the David G. Sant General Engineering Scholarship Endowment and the construction of the new building.
“Having state-of-the-art facilities plays a very important role in attracting top-notch students and staff to USU’s College of Engineering,” said Sant. “Funded research adds to the image and the creative environment in the engineering school, and I believe that funding scholarships is important in making sure qualified students can attend and achieve their goals.
The College of Engineering has been very aggressive in becoming a world-class engineering school, and I am very pleased that it has chosen to honor me with this new building naming.”
Explaining his motivation for the gift, Sant said he was looking for a substantial way to give back to the community that shaped his life. He said there is no better way to do that than to support the institutions that equipped him for his career.
“Dave’s vision for innovation and its power to transform the world is the foundation for the College of Engineering’s motto ‘Creating Tomorrow, Today,’ and his generous giving has led to the construction of this new building,” said H. Scott Hinton, dean of the College of Engineering. “The building will provide the facilities to help develop and demonstrate hands-on creative and innovative skills of our faculty and students through undergraduate and graduate research. This modern laboratory facility will be used to explore and develop technology ideas and prototypes that can be used to stimulate the technology transfer process from the university to the marketplace.”
Sant earned a bachelor’s and master’s in electrical engineering at USU in ’62 and ’64. He then went on to earn an MBA from Santa Clara University.
For more information about the event, contact Kathy Rigby at 435-797-2762. For more information on USU’s College of Engineering, visit www.engineering.usu.edu.