Discovery Learning Initiative/Center

Discovery Learning Center Already Offers Opportunities for Student Learning - Opening Set for Spring 2002

Aerospace engineering students Emma Dee, Samantha Dimmick and Alex McClearn work with industry professional Ed Adams (bottom right) in marking the DLC's cornerstones.

Ground wasn't even broken yet on the college's new Discovery Learning Center when the facility already became a focus for student learning.

In spring 2000, aerospace engineering students Emma Dee, Samantha Dimmick, Brian Ickler and Alex McClearn participated in a Discovery Learning project, which determined the precise location of the building's 16 cornerstones using global positioning system technology and marked them for the official groundbreaking ceremony on May 12, 2000.

The students compared different types of GPS receivers, with and without signal interference, with the help of Ed Adams of Merrick & Co., an Aurora-based firm able to use the U.S. system of 27 Earth-orbiting satellites to locate ground coordinates within one or two centimeters accuracy.

The use of high-tech advances in global positioning provided an appropriate launch for the Discovery Learning Center, where students and faculty will work with industrial partners on advanced research problems in a variety of disciplines. The list of initial tenants spans fields from bioengineering to space sciences, with strong student involvement a prerequisite for tenancy.

Alumni donors, from left to right, Jim McAnally, Terie and Gary Roubos, and students Scott Henry and Shreve Caile assist in the DLC groundbreking ceremony.

The center will provide a 45,000-square-foot, technology-rich research and learning environment, complementing the college's leading undergraduate design facility, the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory. The DLC is being built at the corner of Regent Drive and Colorado Avenue, where it will be linked to the ITLL and the rest of the Engineering Center with pedestrian bridges. More