FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INDIANAPOLIS — University leadership, faculty, staff and students will soon gather to celebrate and dedicate University Hall, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis’ newest building and an important milestone in the development of the campus.
WHAT: University Hall dedication ceremony
WHEN: 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8
WHERE: IUPUI Campus Center, Room 450 C, 420 University Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46202
Conveniently located at the corner of New York Street and University Boulevard, the $22.9 million, five-story, 100,000-square-foot University Hall is a mixed-used building that features spaces to encourage collaboration among students, faculty and staff.
University Hall serves as the new home for one of IU’s newest schools and the world’s first school of philanthropy — the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy — as well as offers critically needed expansion space for the School of Social Work, including serving as the headquarters for its MSW Direct Program, which is ranked seventh among online-degree MSW programs in the U.S. The building also offers an interactive classroom that features immersive touchscreen video walls with highly interactive software that allows users to connect instantly and share and control the display, which helps foster collaboration and decision-making, as well as a collaborative classroom offering advanced distance education/videoconference technologies.
University Hall also houses the IU Foundation, the IU Alumni Association and IUPUI Office of Alumni Relations as well as various IU and IUPUI administrative offices.
An open house at University Hall, featuring guided tours facilitated by campus ambassadors, will be open to the public from 3:30 to 5 p.m. and 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
“This magnificent structure reflects some of IUPUI’s unique and core strengths and is emblematic of the campus’s enterprising culture, its continued growth and the maturation of the campus as a vibrant hub for activity in downtown Indianapolis,” said IU President Michael A. McRobbie. “Additionally, the building signifies IUPUI’s commitment to philanthropy and social work students who will become leaders in their respective fields by transforming the student experience through its interactive and collaborative classrooms.”
Occupants of University Hall, which were scattered across campus, began relocating to the new facility in July.
“University Hall promises to strengthen our campus community, connecting people once spread across campus, offering a venue for academic programming and generating opportunities for serendipitous interactions,” IUPUI Chancellor Nasser H. Paydar said. “University Hall also puts student success center stage — a strategic priority for the entire university. It’s the latest in a series of projects that concentrate people and energy at the core of our campus, the most important elements in generating an intellectual community.”
University Hall was built to silver LEED standards and constructed for energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.