In the last decade the number of UM-Flint students majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines has increased by 84 percent — and all are housed in a single facility, the Murchie Science Building (MSB). To accommodate continued enrollment growth in STEM, UM-Flint is expanding MSB with an addition that adds 65,000 square feet of new, active and team-based learning spaces.

This $39 million project, which began construction in 2019, will not only provide new classrooms and laboratories, but also meet the unique needs of UM-Flint’s nontraditional student population, providing majority-commuter students with a strong connection to the campus and cultivating a sense of community by including more open spaces where students can gather and collaborate.

The four-story addition will add learning spaces, including a high bay lab for vibration and automotive experiments, wet labs for bioscience and chemistry, and engineering labs. Large, general purpose classrooms are consolidated in a single, universal third-floor space, preventing siloes, promoting synergies and encouraging cross-disciplinary study.

The completion of the project in early 2021 will enable UM-Flint to continue delivering the highest-quality education to students pursuing degrees in STEM, and will ensure that every student — whether traditional or nontraditional — experiences the university’s on-campus community.

In 2016, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation awarded UM-Flint an $11 million grant to support the campus’ continued growth of STEM studies. The largest portion of the grant provided $7.5 million to help match UM-Flint’s portion of the state of Michigan’s capital outlay appropriation for the Murchie expansion.