Groundbreaking ceremony held for Therkildsen Industrial Engineering building

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Sept. 23, 2022, marking the beginning of construction on the new Therkildsen Industrial Engineering building.

Serving as the new home of Iowa State University’s Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, the Therkildsen Industrial Engineering building will provide enhanced research laboratories and learning spaces where industrial engineering students can gain the knowledge to design innovative, nimble and intelligent processes.

The building project will offer nearly 80,000 gross square feet of space located southwest of Howe Hall on the Iowa State campus and will be designed to complement the current aesthetics of the university’s engineering corridor. It will feature an advanced manufacturing laboratory to train engineers for the Industry 4.0 era, a human factors and ergonomics teaching and research laboratory and a data-intensive engineering analysis and visualization laboratory for teaching and research.

The facility is named in honor of Iowa State graduates C.G. “Turk” and Joyce A. McEwen Therkildsen. Their $42 million lead gift for the facility is the largest gift for an academic building at Iowa State University.

“We are so grateful to Turk and Joyce for stepping forward in such a transformational way to ensure future generations can have the same opportunity for life-changing experiences as they had,” said Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen during the ceremony. “Industrial engineering has a long and proud history at Iowa State. This gift and the new facility it will provide will ensure IMSE remains a top-ranked program and a premier destination for students, faculty and staff for generations to come.”

The featured speakers for the event were President Wendy Wintersteen; Turk Therkildsen; W. Samuel Easterling, James L. and Katherine S. Melsa Dean of the College of Engineering; Sarah Ryan, C.G. “Turk” and Joyce A. Therkildsen Department Chair; Landon Getting, an industrial engineering graduate student; and; Larissa Holtmyer Jones, ISU Foundation President and CEO.