ISELF rooms are collaborative spaces that will integrate multiple classes into the same space. Photo by Adam Hammer ’05
St. Cloud State opened its innovative Integrated Science and Engineering Laboratory Facility (ISELF) to students this fall. “Education plus business collaboration — that’s the idea behind ISELF,” was the message from the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s editorial about the new facility.
“This building attracts the caliber of student we need and creates an opportunity for us to keep those students here when they’ve graduated,” said Patti Gartland, president of the Greater St. Cloud Development Corporation, in the editorial. “It’s also a resource for the business community, for meeting their needs within their operations. It gives them not only the trained talent that they need, but helps them do the work they need to do — and do it here.”
Former dean of the College of Science and Engineering, David DeGroote, conceptualized the facility in which laboratory space is temporarily allocated to projects and teams of people, not permanently given to campus entities. He famously said: “They’ll come. They’ll work. They’ll leave.” Furthermore, Central Minnesota businesses, including more than 50 precision manufacturing companies, can prototype new processes using ISELF space and student-faculty ingenuity.
ISELF completes the three-part science initiative that creates St. Cloud State’s science campus for the future.
