IUP set to open $90 million classroom hall

Hannah Borys and her classmates may feel like time travelers once their Indiana University of Pennsylvania science classes move from a dated 1960s hall into a gleaming venue designed to promote collaboration across disciplines.

The $90 million John J. and Char Kopchick Hall at IUP is set to open in January, officials said.

The project, dating to 2018, has weathered construction delays from the covid pandemic and is part of a major push by the State System of Higher Education to update venues for science instruction at its 10 member universities.

Nearly every IUP student is expected to use the hall, either for classes in their major or for general studies. The four-story L-shaped brick building with 143,536 square feet fronts the leafy Oak Grove on IUP’s 9,300 student-campus, a little over an hour north and east of Pittsburgh.

“It’s probably going to be a big shock,” Borys, 21, a senior biology major with medical school aspirations, said Friday.

But it’s a good one. “We’ll have new technology, and everything will be more available. It’ll be easier for students to become involved in research projects,” said Borys, who is from Beaver Springs in Snyder County.

The spacious building with dedicated areas for faculty and student collaboration, as well as leading-edge labs, will provide a learning backdrop that is decades more advanced than the Carl S. Weyandt Hall, dedicated in 1966, a time when phones were rotary dial and man had not yet walked on the Moon.

The building will be razed, officials said.

The public will have a first look at the new hall’s interior on Thursday. A ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 p.m. will be attended by IUP and State System leaders, and guided tours will be offered beforehand from 2- to 3:30 p.m.

Michael Driscoll, IUP president, said Kopchick Hall is what students need and deserve to explore the sciences, from lecture classes and labs, to the open space promoting scholarly interaction.

“The common spaces in the building are open to all, and this facility is designed to be state-of-the-art, reflecting the best thinking of what will be needed for science teaching and learning for the next 20 years,” Driscoll said in a statement.

The hall will house approximately 65 faculty. It will be home to departments of the Kopchick College, except for the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, which will remain in Stright Hall; the Department of Safety Sciences, which will remain in Johnson Hall; and the Department of Anthropology, which will remain in McElhany Hall, officials said.

Along with laboratory space, including 43 research lab modules, Kopchick Hall has almost 10,000 square feet of collaboration space and 8,000 feet of formal teaching space, including three flexible classrooms. Included in the new hall are the Cejka Planetarium, imaging lab, laser lab, anatomy lab, and roof terrace and partial green roof for research.

The state Department of General Services provided design and construction management for the project.

The building is named for IUP graduates John and Char Labay Kopchick, long-time campus supporters. The couple made a $23 million donation to IUP in April 2018 for science and mathematics initiatives on campus.

The couple expressed their feelings about what their gift has helped secure.

“We are deeply and profoundly proud to have our name ‘etched’ in the history of science at IUP,” the Kopchicks said. “It is a spectacular, breathtaking, awesome, and humbling honor,” the couple said. “We hope all future students who study and do research in this fabulous building will be inspired to a lifelong passion for science.”

The new hall is built on the site of Leonard Hall, which was demolished in summer 2018.

State System Chancellor Daniel Greenstein Friday lauded the project as an important part of the State System’s strategy around teaching the STEM fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

Elsewhere, West Chester University has opened a new building with a reported cost of approximately $130M, system spokesman Kevin Hensil said. Other campuses that have seen major science facility investments include California and Clarion in the west, as well as Cheyney and East Stroudsburg universities.

“This facility is critically important in advancing the State System’s strategy to prepare students for the most in-demand careers by offering generations of students a place to learn and grow as we seek to fill the significant shortage of STEM workers, ” Greenstein said Friday.

Space in Weyandt Hall can be cramped, and Borys said her work area is in the basement. But Kopchich Hall is designed to showcase science, with windows enabling those inside the building to see the Oak Grove , and those outside to look in as learning occurs, said Steve Hovan, dean of the Kopchick College.

For example, he said, students can watch from a monitor set up in an atrium as scientists work on a scanning electron microscope.

“It’s almost impossible to measure the advantages that this building will offer to our students, both tangible and intangible, in order that they continue to change the world as educators, scientists, and leaders,” he said.