Miami University’s newest campus addition, the $58 million McVey Data Science building, will have its grand opening March 14.
The building, which has been open to students since Jan. 29, is a modern creation of open-concept, technology-centric, flexibility-focused design. Students are greeted by an airy central atrium, a muted, warm color palette, hallways lined with frosted glass walls and study alcoves that seem to tell students “you are meant to be productive here.”
Unique spaces in the 92,000 square foot building include a firewalled cybersecurity lab, labs where students can work with robots and other technologies, and a virtual reality lab. Most impressive is an XR (extended reality) stage, which is “a wall of LED panels and an LED floor that immerses the character standing on the stage in that environment,” said John Porchowsky, project architect in the planning, architecture and engineering department at Miami.
He said that the XR stage is not just for emerging technology in business and design majors.
“It’s also for English and film studies and everything else,” Porchowsky said.
Richard M. McVey, Miami class of 1981, gave $20 million toward the total $58 million cost and will attend the grand opening. He is the founder and executive chairman of MarketAxess, a financial electronic trading company headquartered in New York.
“It’s gifts like Rick’s that enable us to do stuff like this,” Porchowsky said.
The new building follows the glass, stone and red brick exterior style familiar to new Miami buildings, but has dropped the square, symmetrical Miami style in its interior. According to Porchowsky, the gently curved hallways were built using data analytics to calculate students’ travel paths between departments, creating an efficiently curated academic experience.
Three academic departments now call McVey home: emerging technology in business and design, statistics and computer science and software engineering, as well as the Center for Analytics and Data Science.
Statistics department chair Robert Davis wrote in an email that this departmental proximity “may lead to some interesting collaborative opportunities” in the future.
Emma Diviney, junior emerging technology in business and design and fashion corporate business student, said the new building is “really nice,” compared to her previous building, Laws Hall, “which was kind of gross and small.”
“It’s huge, it’s fancy, it’s clean,” Diviney added.
Students already have been taking advantage of the collaboration spaces in hallways and the main atria of McVey, studying, working or simply taking time between classes, Davis said.
“It’s a welcoming space, and it facilitates students’ learning,” he wrote.
Located at 105 Tallawanda Road, the McVey Data Science building is the third new building Miami has opened in the past 12 months. The Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm opened in February 2023 and the $96 million Clinical Health Sciences and Wellness building opened in June, according to a Miami University press release.
