Miami University celebrates grand opening of McVey Data Science building

Miami University recently celebrated the grand opening of the McVey Data Science building with a ceremony that underscored the school’s rising reputation for education in digital arts, data science and digital technology. The event featured Rick McVey, the building’s namesake, and guest speaker Billy Beane, the former executive vice president of baseball operations for the Oakland Athletics and the subject of the acclaimed book and feature film “Moneyball.”

The 92,000-square-foot facility officially opened for students on Jan. 29 and has quickly become a space for collaboration and connection between students and faculty. Envisioned as a place to foster transdisciplinary research, the three-story building includes 14 classrooms, 12 conference and seminar rooms, 88 offices and a grand atrium.  

The new building serves as home for Miami’s departments of statistics, computer science, software engineering, and emerging technology in business and designs. With data science and artificial intelligence having a profound and continuing growing impact on nearly every aspect of society, the building is designed to equip students with skills and connections that open opportunities for decades to come. 

Here are the top five things to know about the McVey Data Science building and its thoughtful design:

1. The building offers students immersive learning experiences focused on the promotion of innovation and creativity through four cutting-edge spaces: the Experiential Learning Lab, the User Experience (UX) Lab, the Virtual Reality Lab, and the Cybersecurity Lab.  
2. Increased collaboration among students, cross-disciplinary faculty and industry partners was a guiding principle in the design process. The building includes instructional space, offices, research and project and various spaces for students to gather and linger.  
3. Data analytics are not only at the core of the building’s academic focus, they were also used to program the building. The design team leveraged data to simulate the likely walking paths of users and create a layout that provided easy access to high-use spaces while helping to bolster connectivity within the campus community. 
4. At the heart of the building, a two-story black box houses the Extended Reality (XR) Stage that allows students and faculty to create, test, and record immersive professional quality digital film experiences and can be used for dramatic performances. 
5. The McVey Data Science Building collocates several departments to create a transdisciplinary research and learning hub, including: the Department of Statistics, the Department of Emerging Technology in Business + Design, and the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, as well as the Center for Analytics and Data Science and the Lilly Leadership Institute. Information Systems and Analytics also has a presence in the building.

This cutting-edge facility is not only equipped with technology and learning spaces that will prepare the next generation of data science professionals, but also, it's nurturing a collaborative campus culture. It's specifically designed to increase student-student and student-faculty engagement in a way that wasn't easily accessible in the previous homes of the respective departments. The McVey Data Science building will help propel the university and its students to the forefront of the industry, while elevating students' campus experience along the way.