Until recently, walking through the ground-floor corridor of Wentworth Hall was almost like taking a step back in time. Pedestrians were greeted by a painted concrete floor, high-school style lockers, and in some cases, lab equipment that dated to the middle of last century.
Today, construction is underway on two major renovations that will transform this hallway into a modern thoroughfare featuring state-of-the-art laboratories and classrooms. The Altschuler Computer Center will open this spring, and new strength of materials, nanotechnology, and materials science laboratories will be completed over the summer. The architect for the renovations is Allegro. Columbia is the construction management firm.
Along with the Manufacturing Center, completed in 2011, these new projects complete Wentworth’s “High-Tech Highway,” a central artery through Williston, Wentworth, and Dobbs Halls.
“It’s going to be a showpiece,” says David Wahlstrom, AET ’80, vice president of business. “These updates bring everything up to today’s standards.”
Samuel Altschuler, Hon. ’08—father of Jeff Altschuler, MET ’84, and grandfather of current computer networking student David Altschuler—was eager to provide an environment that would help Wentworth students gain a clear advantage as they prepare to enter the work force. Industry-standard networking equipment, servers, and data-storage equipment will allow students to practice tackling the same issues faced by giants of the technology world.
“We’re very enthusiastic about what will be one of the finest networking laboratories in the United States,” says Altschuler, who, with his wife Nancy, donated $1 million toward the new facility. “This computer center will be an important part of improving the educational opportunities for students in the computer networking area.”
A rendering of a classroom area in the Altschuler Computer Center
“Amazon, Facebook, and Google all run data centers with hundreds of thousands of servers, and they spend a lot of time architecting these systems to make sure they function,” explains Charlie Wiseman, assistant professor of computer science and computer networking, who worked closely with the Altschulers and others on the project. “Now our students can build their own miniature versions of these systems. If you look at other programs around the country, the lab we’re going to have will enable us to teach things to undergraduates that nobody teaches.”
Down the hall, construction is in progress on the multi-phase lab project. Funded in part by a $1 million gift from the Gelfand Family Charitable Trust, led by Wentworth friends and supporters Mark Gelfand and Cynthia Calabrese, the space includes a new strength of materials lab—which will triple the size of the current lab—as well as complete overhauls of the materials science and nanotechnology labs.
“Having a gift like this moves us from the 1960s to today,” says Michael Jackson, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Technology. “The principles haven’t changes, but the equipment changes, and we have to keep up with it.”
In the strength of materials lab, new equipment tests tensile strength, torsion, structural behavior, and more on smaller, more streamlined packages that use modern software. In some cases, giant freestanding machines are being replaced with tabletop models.
“Bringing in the modern equipment and the modern technology is incredible for our students,” Jackson adds. “I think it motivates them to know that we are trying to make them better at what they’re going to be doing out in the real world.”
–Caleb Cochran
