New Foundry Dedicated

Collaborative Foundry and Workshop Facilities Will Be Dedicated at April 19 Ribbon Cutting

From the April 2013 Desktop News | A workshop and foundry that will be shared by the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering will be dedicated April 19 with a ribbon cutting ceremony. New state-of-the-art facilities in the Bureau of Mines Arts and Engineering Complex on the UA campus provide an environment for creativity, productivity, and collaboration among faculty and students in both colleges.

“The Bureau of Mines Arts and Engineering Complex will be a space where any student can come create something,” said Dr. Robert Olin, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “This space is meant to provide a place for inspiration and to encourage our students to develop their great ideas and turn them into reality. We want them to have a place where they can get their hands dirty and experience the enjoyment of seeing a project come to fruition.”

The complex includes a renovated machine shop where faculty and staff can construct custom equipment for research and labs and make repairs to specialized equipment used throughout campus. Many departments in the College use this facility for specialized projects: physics and astronomy, chemistry, geological sciences, psychology, biological sciences, art and art history, and others. The College’s machine shop has been consolidated with the College of Engineering’s machine shop, providing opportunities for collaborative work and resource sharing between students and faculty in both divisions. The area also includes a secure storage facility for raw materials used in equipment production.

The complex also boasts a renovated foundry facility that supports the sculpture program in the Department of Art and Art History and has been extended to include space for a foundry for the College of Engineering. Its design facilitates collaboration and resource sharing. Students and faculty will also learn new casting and investment techniques and explore the use of new materials that were previously not supported by the College of Arts and Sciences’ foundry.

There will be a separate ribbon cutting for the College of Engineering foundry facility, also on April 19. The new facility replaces a foundry in a part of H.M. Comer Hall razed to make way for the new North Engineering Research Center, set to open this fall.