A Crucible for Creativity
VCU's expansion into the proposed Monroe Campus means more than a bigger, better School of Engineering. It represents the Richmond region's commitment to building an economy based upon technological prowess and entrepreneurial innovation.
William F. Goodwin, Chairman of the VCU School of Engineering Foundation Board of Trustees, has set an ambitious objective for an engineering program so new that it has admitted only five entering classes. He's aiming for "25 in 25" - a top 25 engineering-school rank within 25 years.
Consider the magnitude of the task. The School has no network of wealthy alumni to tap for contributions. VCU's engineering graduates - the first class matriculated in 2000 - have barely embarked upon their careers.
"It's certainly a difficult goal," acknowledges Goodwin, a Virginia Tech engineering graduate and one of Richmond's most successful, hard-driving business leaders. He knows full well how high he has set the bar. "But I've never let a difficult goal stop me. The people involved just have to share the same vision."
Fortunately, VCU Engineering has proven that it can meet ambitious goals. Not only has the school built a handsome, $30 million building and $10 million micro-electronics lab, it has recruited 44 faculty members who are generating $10 million in sponsored research. Perhaps most impressive, says Engineering Dean Robert J. Mattauch, the school has attracted a strong student body: Average SAT scores of 1240 are comparable to those at Virginia Tech.
The School of Engineering's strategic plan calls for more than doubling the size of the institution over the next decade. Integral to that plan is an expansion across Belvidere Street into what VCU officials are calling the Monroe Campus. In VCU's vision for the 10.8-acre, $196 million complex, there will be room not only for a second engineering building, but new facilities for the School of Business, an executive conference center, on-campus apartments and possibly a home for the VCU Ad Center. Assuming the property can be assembled and the money raised, the Monroe Campus will provide the physical space for Engineering to add roughly 30 faculty, 1,500 students and space for state-of-the-art laboratories.
But there's more to the grand vision than simple square footage. VCU President Eugene Trani regards the initiative as an opportunity to make VCU a leader in the transformation of higher education by tearing down walls between traditional academic disciplines. By locating the business and engineering schools next door to one another, VCU will educate a new generation of business-savvy engineers and tech-savvy MBAs. And by designing an environment where engineering and business profs and grad students can mingle - a path-breaking concept in higher education -- Trani will create a crucible for creativity of a kind never before seen in Richmond.
Business Dean Michael Sesnowitz expects the sparks to fly. Business and engineering faculty will encounter one another more frequently than they do now, he says, not just in the classroom but in a dining hall, lounge or outdoor courtyard. "While universities are neatly categorized into departments, the world isn't categorized that way. Problems require multi-faceted solutions. … It's often the chance encounters and casual conversations that lead to new ideas."
The Monroe Campus is, arguably, Richmond's most significant civic undertaking of the new millennium. The hefty price tag exceeds anything else currently under consideration.
University plans project that 85 percent, or $166 million, of the project cost will come from donations and student fees. Donor contributions totaling $102 million will cover the School of Engineering buildings, a signature tower, renovation of the Belting Building, a new home for the Anderson Gallery, and half of the land to be acquired. User fees will cover the $41 million price tag for two residential colleges and a $9 million executive center, while parking subscriptions will finance a $14 million parking deck. The only money requested from the Commonwealth, aside from $10 million already appropriated for a biochip/biosensor lab at the site of the current engineering building, is $15 million for half the cost of a new School of Business building and $5 million for land acquisition.
Raising money on that scale represents a tremendous challenge to a city Richmond's size, especially considering that the Monroe Campus will compete with other high-visibility projects such as a new performing arts center and a new baseball stadium - not to mention routine fund-raising appeals from established institutions.
In the estimation of Linda Dalch Jones, Vice President of the School of Engineering Foundation, the Monroe Campus has one big advantage: It serves two core community aims: building the second phase of a key institution of learning plus contributing to the revitalization of Richmond's downtown. "The landmark buildings of the Monroe Campus will anchor the western end of downtown," she says. "We expect the project to stimulate millions of dollars of additional investment along Main and Cary Streets." (Read the sidebar, "Built to Last," to see what the Monroe Campus means for downtown revitalization.)
The Monroe Campus has one other incomparable selling point: It represents an investment in the region's capacity to create wealth. The new facilities will pay tangible dividends that benefit the entire Richmond area: providing valuable skills to the management-level workforce, ramping up scientific R&D, generating entrepreneurial spin-offs and recruiting new industry to the region.
"The Monroe Campus is one of the most important projects in our metropolitan area," says Goodwin. "It has the greatest chance of creating economic vitality and jobs. … I would certainly hope that the community will support the cost of making this work."
Bob Mattauch is the man with the plan for the VCU School of Engineering. The soft-spoken professor-turned-administrator, whose experience includes running the electrical engineering department at the University of Virginia and then VCU before becoming dean of VCU's engineering school, has plotted out a strategy for vaulting the School of Engineering to the next tier in academic rankings.
To ramp up the program, Mattauch says, he has to move along three fronts. First, he must build a larger faculty, recruiting research superstars capable of attracting R&D funding. Second, he has to lure even brighter, more accomplished students. And third, he must provide modern and architecturally impressive accommodations for both. Progress on each front requires advances in the others.
"We need to strive for excellence," Goodwin explains. "In academia, you accomplish that by getting a strong research program. Strong faculty and strong research attracts strong students. That's the formula."
To plot VCU's growth path, Mattauch has studied the top engineering programs in the country. "Those in Tier Two, ranked 26 to 75, have at least one or two nationally known research efforts per department," he says. "That requires about 10 faculty members, very carefully chosen, per laboratory or research effort. … You have to have the right people on the bus, and you have to have them in the right seats."
Five departments… two nationally recognized labs… 10 faculty per lab. That means VCU needs to build its faculty from 44 to at least 100, says Mattauch, who quickly adds, "One hundred and twenty would be better." Given a student-faculty ratio of 20 to one, 120 faculty would imply a student body of 2,400, up from 900 now.
Phase 2 of the Engineering School's growth on the Monroe Campus will take it a big step towards the final goal: approximately 75 faculty and 1,500 to 1,660 students. One key question, says Mattauch, is whether there will be jobs for all those students. His answer: Yes, there will be. The School has targeted fast-growth engineering disciplines that will exhibit the greatest demand for engineers in the years ahead:
biomedical, computer science, electrical and mechanical. The one relatively slow-growth discipline - chemical engineering - was selected because it will feed into one of the Richmond region's major economic sectors, a large specialty-chemicals industry cluster.
The engineering building on the Monroe Campus, to be located right across Belvidere from the existing building, will cost an estimated $38.5 million. Mattauch wants another $11.5 million to augment faculty endowments. "I'm looking for endowed professors, very high-level people," he says. To recruit them, he'll need to supplement their state salaries, frozen for three years straight, with as much as $25,000 annually plus a $25,000 purse for expenses. Finally, the dean wants another $10 million for merit-based scholarships to recruit bright students.
The Monroe Campus is absolutely vital to taking the Engineering School from a spunky start-up to a mature institution capable of making a major impact on the community and the world. As Bill Goodwin puts it, "This is the phase that really counts, where you go from being a boy to a man."
VCU officials have been listening to the business community, and one of the things they're hearing is that companies want managers possessing both business and technical skills.
"More and more," says Greg Wingfield, president of the Greater Richmond Partnership, "employers are looking for engineers who are business people. They need people who have the technical background of an engineering degree but who also can function as a CFO or a marketing director." The need is particularly acute for small businesses, who can't afford large staffs of specialists.
"When we're recruiting a German or Korean company, they like to pile on as many capabilities as they can," Wingfield says. "If you have someone with an engineering degree who understands the product that's being manufactured, they have the ability to sell that product to a customer. Then you have something really special."
From the beginning, the School of Engineering was designed to educate "renaissance engineers" - engineers with an understanding of basic business principles and the workings of the global economy. Course requirements give students exposure to balance sheets, marketing, leadership, teamwork and foreign cultures. But the Monroe Campus will immerse engineers in even more diverse perspectives by providing an environment where they can mix with the business students on a daily basis.
Mattauch draws an analogy with the famous Xerox PARC laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif., which created so many of the key innovations that sparked the PC revolution. "Build common areas where people get together," says the dean. "Take the physicists, the chemists, the engineers, and give them a reason to mix. A coffee bar, an eating area, lounge space. If you have a pollination job to do, put something good-smelling to bring the bees there!"
Another idea, still in the conceptual stage, is to re-create the community of a residential college-within-a-college like Cambridge or Yale. Diverse groups of students might belong to a particular "house," sharing living and eating arrangements - perhaps with a faculty member in charge.
That notion may get some traction because it happens to be shared by VCU's top brass. "It helps to put people into close proximity," says President Trani. "We certainly found that out with life sciences. We put biology, the medical center and chemistry right next door to each other."
Monroe Campus will build on VCU's transformation over the past decade from a commuter campus to a residential campus, furthering Trani's vision of building a nationally recognized institution that draws students from far beyond the Richmond region. Only five years ago, the university counted only 189 freshmen from Fairfax County. This year, says Trani, VCU admitted 422 freshmen from the county. Conversely, the number of Richmond area students has remained constant over the past five years, even while the freshman class increased in size by 50 percent.
Students are drawn by top-flight programs in life sciences, the arts, advertising and engineering. Increasingly, they prefer to live on campus and participate in the VCU experience - not live somewhere else and commute to campus just for classes. VCU has built several on-campus apartments to accommodate the out-of-town growth, and now houses 4,000 students. The number could climb to 5,500 to 6,000, Trani says. "More and more students want to come to VCU. The Monroe Campus will help get us there."
Many things must happen before work can begin on the Monroe Campus. The largest parcels in the 10.8-acre complex are now in the hands of VCU or friendly landowners. But numerous small lots remain to be acquired. Negotiations to purchase the rest of the property will take time.
Also, raising more than $196 million is a massive undertaking. Fortunately, a growing economy may loosen up the philanthropic purse-strings in the private sector. Gene Trani has built enormous credibility in the Richmond business community as someone who can make things happen. If he says the Monroe Campus is a top priority, people believe him. Having Bill Goodwin's support is critical. The entrepreneur is a force of nature: Nothing stands in his path. Meanwhile, other notables -- like Steve Markel, vice chairman of Markel Corporation and chairman of the School of Business Campaign -- have lined up behind the project.
In the end, though, the Monroe Campus will have to stand on its own merits. When Richmonders buy into the notion that the engineering and business schools will drive the regional economy forward in the 21st century, the financial support will be forthcoming.
"It's a fantastic project," says Ken Wright, an engineering foundation trustee who donated the old Central Belting Building to the endeavor among many other gifts to jumpstart the Phase II engineering effort. "It's ambitious. It's a lot of money. But it's doable."
-- May 2004
