The University of Vermont’s largest-ever capital project will bring a state-of-the-art STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) complex of laboratories, classrooms and research facilities to campus and prepare our students for careers in rewarding, high-growth fields. The new STEM complex will house: chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, and computer science; twenty state-of-the-art teaching labs; seven media-rich classrooms that foster team-based learning and engaging, problem-based teaching; faculty labs that promote innovation and collaboration; and comfortable meeting spaces for student and faculty interaction. Its three interconnected buildings include a selectively renovated Votey Hall, a new teaching and research laboratory building (Discovery Building); and a new building for classrooms, team-based learning spaces and offices (Innovation Building). The STEM Complex will serve as a figurative spine for the Central Campus, bridging the magnificent buildings of University Row to the west, with the health sciences complex to the east, and the Davis Student Center and the residential life areas to the south.
The STEM disciplines have been associated with the most promising economic development opportunities — areas from which will come solutions to the greatest challenges we face as a nation, a planet, and a people (water, food, energy, security, health, and health-care). STEM disciplines also promise to be key in providing meaningful and rewarding jobs, and to creating new technologies and companies in manufacturing, in wind energy, in smart grid technologies, in solar power, in aerospace systems, in biotechnology, in e-commerce, in health-care informatics, and in advanced computing.