User:Phijma2/M. T. Geoffrey Yeh Student Center Addition

M. T. Geoffrey Yeh Student Center is a four story addition to the Northeast corner of Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The addition is named after the noted alumnus and major donor, Geoffrey Yeh. The Student Center Addition was part of the original 1965 design of Newmark Lab, but was never constructed. The Yeh Student Center Addition is due to be completed in 2011. It will house classrooms, student organization offices, new laboratories, and student study space for the Civil Engineering Department. The Student Center also boasts a host of features which include, but are not limited to, a Green Roof, Registered Student Organization (RSO) offices, and a computer lab.

History
The Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory was designed in 1965 for the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Civil Engineering Department used the limited amount of classrooms in Newmark Lab and UIUC Engineering Hall, located a block and a half south of Newmark Lab, for the majority of its classes.

The Civil Engineering Department at the University of Illinois has been ranked as one of the top Civil Engineering Programs in the nation in recent years. However, during the 2006-07 school year, over half of the Civil Engineering courses were taught outside of Newmark Lab. The Yeh Student Center Addition will provide the department a center for all the activities of the Civil Engineering Department, a feature that it has been lacking since the construction of Newmark Lab.

The addition is named after M. T. Geoffrey Yeh, who is a noted alumnus and donor to the Civil Engineering Department. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He went on to graduate from Harvard University with a Master of Science degree and become a chairman of Hsin Chong International Holdings, Ltd. Mr. Yeh has been an active alumni to University of Illinois by establishling both the M. T. Geoffrey Yeh Graduate Research Fellowship and the M. T. Geoffrey Yeh Endowed Chair. Most recently he donated $4.0 million to help fund the construction of the Newmark Laboratory expansion.

Project Timeline
In 2007, the Civil Engineering Department recognized the need to finish the original plans for Newmark Lab and started the feasibility research process for the Student Center Addition. On January 10, 2008, the request to build the 22,500 square feet, three-story addition was approved by the Chancellors Capital Review Committee (CCRC). It was originally quoted to cost $9,000,000 with $7,000,000 being funded by donor gifts and $2,000,000 from the College of Engineering. Then on March 26, 2008, the Board of Trustees approved the Student Center Addition.

Once the approval process was completed, the design and construction process was able to initiate. The project was a Design-Bid-Build project. First, the Architect and Engineer were selected and they designed the addition. This went from April 4, 2008 to May 22, 2009. Once the construction documents were finalized, a Request for Proposal (RFP) was sent out to contractors so they could bid on the project. The contractors were notified of their successful bid over the Summer of 2009. The actual groundbreaking was in the Fall of 2009 and construction began. The construction is still in progress and should be finished by Spring of 2011.

Features
The 20,500 square feet of the Yeh Student Center will contain a variety of new features for the Civil Engineering Department. There will be five new classrooms and a lecture hall. This will allow for the Civil Engineering Department to host more of the department classes within its own building. This was one of the primary concerns of a Civil Department which is regarded as one of the best in the nation.

The Addition will also have several amenities specifically for students. There will be three study lounge areas, two civil engineering orientated RSO offices, and a fifty person computer lab for student use. These are all services which Newmark Lab has lacked since its inception. Civil engineering students will no longer have to seek out meeting space for their student organizations and computer labs boasted by other U of I buildings.

LEED Certification
One of the important goals of the Yeh Student Center Addition was to have it be LEED Silver Certified. This is the third highest LEED certification level. Certification levels are obtained by amassing credits in five different green categories. These categories are sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. The credits are awarded by a third party.

Under the Project Manual provided to Contractors who were to bid on the project, there were many different credits which were taken into account to ensure the Addition be LEED certified. Several of the conditions were dependent on two criteria. Many of the materials had to be regional materials. This meant that they had to be extracted, harvested, recovered, or manufactured within 500 miles of the project site. The other condition theme was that a portion of the materials were from recycled content. This was determined by the weight of the material from recycled material and the cost of assembly.

Another noteworthy feature of the building is the Green Roof. This earned LEED credits for it used regional materials (i.e. plants) and used recycled material (i.e. black plastic sheet underneath the plants). The Green Roof has many benefits, the most important being stormwater management and reduced energy costs. The plants on the roof help keep the building cooler in the summer, which, in turn, reduces the amount of air conditioning needed. Green Roofs have also been known to increase roof life.