From Space Stations to Campus Labs: Designing the Future of Aerospace Education

What do you enjoy about designing for engineering education and aerospace engineering programs specifically?

Engineering, and aerospace in particular, is a very innovative and forward-thinking discipline that embraces rapid change and new technologies. Aerospace is also a hybrid engineering discipline encompassing some of the most interesting mechanical, electrical, and physics components–very challenging and yet rewarding subspecialties and studies. There are many varied opportunities and pathways in the aerospace focus. You can go into avionics–which is aircraft–or you can go into space. We are at the front end of the commercial space expansion.

Designing research and teaching spaces in engineering means working with interesting tools and equipment like wind tunnels. Our new building at Virgina Tech, Mitchell Hall, includes one of the largest wind tunnels in a research setting. In other engineering projects, we have designed integrated avionics suites including design fabrication, testing and integration labs, micro satellite testing, launch and control labs, composite manufacturing spaces, and high-tech fabrication/manufacturing (maker spaces). Beyond the aerospace focused labs, our designs have included labs focusing on innovative terrestrial challenges like low emissions/electric flight, earth sensing technologies, and living environments.

I also find the connection between aerospace education and industry interesting. At our new University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Raymond B. Jones Engineering Building, students and researchers are working on things like satellite sensing equipment, where the science behind the equipment is developed and tested at the University and students are involved in building, testing, and controlling these components. Private companies and NASA collaborate with the university to launch the MicroSats, taking the information gathered and applying them to further research. It’s an incredibly interwoven and complex research project and the students have opportunities to be involved in all of it. The interconnected suites replicate all the components that, up until now, were located exclusively at large aerospace companies or NASA.

You mentioned our project with the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where their new Raymond B. Jones Engineering Building is underway and expected to open next year. You also touched on the connections between students and industry and, with Huntsville being a national hub of the aerospace industry, UAH is in a unique position. How is UAH’s new building supporting the aerospace program and what makes it interesting?

One of our mantras at UAH—and I believe a process we go through with all these colleges of engineering—is we want to design spaces that serve both research and teaching and are highly flexible. We know the technologies change quickly, so an ultimate philosophy of flexibility within UAH’s budget was critical.

UAH’s program is different in the sense that their College of Engineering is heavily weighted toward advanced degrees with many students in master’s or doctoral studies. That’s because the university supports the largest aerospace-focused research park in the U.S., Cummings Research Park. The park is literally across the street from the new engineering building. Our new building focuses on workforce training. The students are very connected to post-education practice, and the building reflects both the needs of UAH and the area industries.

Before the UAH project was designed, the College of Engineering was housed in a 1960s-era building that didn’t adequately address the needs of the college, there were no spaces for the students to gather, study, or relax. Our project solves that, providing spaces for student breakout, for student clubs and activities, large gathering areas, hopefully a small food venue, visibility, and connectivity—all things the current College of Engineering building lacks. The design focuses on visibility and connections, and students will be able to see what’s happening around them and get excited about it. On top of that, our design, inside and out, honors the history of Huntsville, NASA Space Marshall Space Flight Center, and the Redstone Arsenal.

The second thing that’s unique is the link with Cummings Research Park and the amazing aerospace companies located in the park. There’s a strong desire by these aerospace companies to be involved in engineering education and to help craft the skills, programs, and classes they need for their engineers to be successful. The new building will draw industry to the campus, meaning these companies and the university both see it as a critical component of their success. The proximity at UAH is driving us to take it even further. Industry collaboration is very front and center. There are spaces in the new building for companies to work with students. It’s something we are intentional with in almost every single engineering building we’ve done.

You also worked on the programming and schematic design for Virginia Tech’s Mitchell Hall, the replacement for the university’s Randolph Hall planned to open in 2028. How will this project elevate aerospace education on Virginia Tech’s campus?

For starters, the space was designed around a central connecting and collaborating atrium with visibility to some of the most interesting spaces—students can see what’s going on, have space to collaborate, and space for rest or socializing. It supports the concepts we discussed previously with visibility, connectivity, excitement around engineering, and creating a true campus hub for these programs. Julie Ross, the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Dean of Engineering, envisioned Mitchell Hall with a “kids in a candy store” kind of experience, and we feel our resulting design will provide that for these students.

The interesting part about most of the new engineering labs is that research spaces double as educational opportunities – there’s an emphasis on experiential learning. The students can collaborate with researchers and get exposure to a level of hands-on learning you can’t get in a typical classroom. Virginia Tech, in particular, prioritizes these student-researcher collaborations.

The aerospace research labs themselves also do double-duty as teaching space, with access to highly complex, expensive, large-scale equipment that’s often not practical to provide in ordinary teaching spaces, like Virginia Tech’s existing Stability Wind Tunnel (SWT). It’s one of the largest university-owned wind tunnels in the world and will be sheltered within one of Mitchell Hall’s several high bays. The SWT gives students that hands-on understanding of the basics of aeronautical engineering and the principles of designing everything from advanced airfoils to acoustically quiet wind turbine blades. And the students work side by side with educators and industry partners on these real-world problems and applications. At the same time, the SWT is a profit center, with companies partnering with researchers at Virginia Tech on new technologies, composite materials, designs, etc.—they put these into the SWT for initial analysis and testing. So, for an engineering student, it’s a pretty amazing opportunity to be involved and a huge draw for Virginia Tech’s program. These students get to participate in authentic research and development while they’re still in school and see first-hand how aerospace companies conduct their work.