November 15, 2007
Groundbreaking held for new SIS building
The groundbreaking for the new SIS building brought together speakers who recalled the school’s first 50 years. From left are SIS associate dean Leeanne Dunsmore; Professor Emeritus Millidge Walker; SIS alumna of the year Sherry Mueller, SIS/BA ’65; Bishop John Schol; Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii); AU President Neil Kerwin; SIS dean Louis Goodman; graduate student Blair Mersinger, SIS/BA ’06; and Professor Paul Wapner. (Photos by Jeff Watts)
Ground was broken officially on Wednesday, Nov. 14, for the innovative new home of the School of International Service, a “green” building that will rise over the next two years on what is now an asphalt parking lot at the edge of the quad.
The 70,000 square foot building will be “the most functional, most beautiful, most environmentally friendly home in the world for a school of international affairs,” SIS dean Louis Goodman told the standing-room crowd of several hundred that spilled out of the white tent that marked the spot of the future building.
The building’s sustainable design will be “setting a powerful example for all of us,” said Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. “You have demonstrated dramatically that the time for talking is over.”
The decorated World War II combat veteran was wielding the same shovel that another veteran of war, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, used when he broke ground for the first SIS building in 1957 and called on the newly launched school to train a new generation for “the waging of peace.”
Now the country’s largest school of international service, it has outgrown the 1950s-era building where once, as Professor Emeritus Millidge Walker recalled, the initial 12 faculty members “were rather spaciously accommodated.”
The new building is not only vastly larger. It is also in keeping with AU’s mission, stature, and influence, said AU President Neil Kerwin.
“For more than 50 years, AU’s School of International Service has been educating young men and women for international service—a distinctive trait of this school and our entire university,” Kerwin said. “With a new green home for our scholars, students, and academic programs, we rededicate ourselves to this mission.”
The school is halfway through its fund-raising goal of $20 million, Kerwin said. Designed by William McDonough, a pioneering architect of “green” design, it will be LEED Gold certified, the benchmark for environmental design.
It will bring together faculty now scattered around campus in eight buildings into one large space, filled with natural light and designed to be an inviting, healthful space. Plans call for the building to have more than 7,000 square feet of solar panels, collect and store rain water for building use and irrigation, and use materials made of recycled materials produced in a socially and environmentally just manner.
There is not, as yet, a hole in the ground. But the ceremony marked the launch of a new phase for the long-envisioned building. Construction trailers, barriers, and other signs of pending work are expected to move onto the site around Dec. 17, with digging to begin shortly afterwards.
“In two years time, I’m sure we won’t be sitting in a tent in a parking lot ” said Paul Wapner, an SIS faculty member whose promotion of sustainable design was instrumental in the building’s final form. “We’ll be in a gorgeous, light-filled building powered by the sun.”
The building is projected to open in 2010.
