Missouri S&T Campus Master Plan

Campus has been abuzz with talk of the Missouri University of Science and Technology “Campus Master Plan”, an outline to develop an “Arrival District” for visitors on campus, among many other things, while creating a cohesive campus that is connected to the Rolla community. This plan has been approved by the University of Missouri Board of Curators during a meeting on the University of Missouri-Kansas City Campus on September 2nd, 2021.

The 2020 Campus Master Plan wants to build upon previous Master Plans, focusing on Chancellor Mohammad Dehghani’s plans for campus. Chancellor Dehghani outlined three focus areas for this Master Plan when he became chancellor in August 2019, “to build research, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking; to increase the university’s recognition and improve its rankings; and to increase recruitment and retention.” Jumping up enrollment is key to making this Master Plan work, because the rest of it won’t matter if we don’t have enough students on campus. “One of our goals as a university is to increase enrollment to 12,000 students,” Dehghani says. “This Campus Master Plan will play an important role in helping S&T achieve this milestone, and the growth of our student population will in turn be a tremendous boost to the community.” The key program drivers include space utilization analysis, space needs assessment, and a campus life survey and demand analysis. The physical drivers include facility condition, infrastructure, site/topography and land use, and access, connectivity, and wayfinding. This plan is going to guide Missouri S&T in it’s campus development over the next 20 years. According to the page of S&T’s website dedicated to the Master Plan, “The 2020 Campus Master Plan proposal gives shape to the diverse collection of data, observations, analysis, thoughts, insights and priorities gathered throughout the master planning process.”

The campus plan highlights a more visible Welcome Center, with more parking, an auditorium, a theater, a large lobby filled with electronic exhibits, a gallery for student exhibits, and meeting rooms for faculty meetings with students and parents. This will be a central hub for these services, as these are currently spread across S&T’s current campus. The S&T Innovation Lab will also be built next to an improved Havener Center. This lab will focus on retention of first-year students, a place for students to convene and collaborate. It will hold a coffee shop, student lounge, active-learning classrooms, and various utilizable spaces. It will also hold the Student Success Center and Writing Center as well. Besides these new additions, the Campus Master Plans also includes renovations to Schrenk Hall and the Engineering Research Laboratory, with an addition to the latter as well. These are just a few of the plans involved with the Campus Master Plan, S&T has some big changes in store for the future. There are countless changes regarding the Arrival District, main campus, athletics, recreation, and mixed use, and a new Research and Development Park that you can find in detail on S&T’s website.