Alan Symicek, UW-River Falls chief facilities officer, describes how construction is progressing on the university’s Science and Technology Innovation Center (SciTech) during a tour of the building Tuesday. Business and government leaders toured the three-story building, which is under construction and is scheduled to open in January 2026. UWRF photo. 
 

Vision for the future: UW-River Falls hosts tour of Science and Technology Innovation Center

Building fostering collaboration between businesses and UWRF set to open in January 2026

July 30, 2024 - As she toured the partly-finished, much-anticipated Science and Technology Innovation Center (SciTech) at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls Tuesday morning, Kristi Cernohous saw firsthand the transformational education building she and her husband Jeff were lead donors for three years ago moving closer to fruition. 

“Wow. This is really cool,” said Kristi, who along with her husband, is a UW-River Falls alum and recent recipients of the UWRF Distinguished Alumni Award. “In a way it seems so long ago that this building was in its planning stages. But now it’s here. And it feels great to see it get to this point.”

Kristi was among a group of people involved with SciTech who received their first tour of the three-story, 136,000 square-foot $117 million science building construction. Work on it began 11 months ago and it is scheduled to open in January 2026. Funding for the building – the largest ever built at UW-River Falls – was approved by lawmakers as part of the 2021-23 state budget.

Business and government leaders touring SciTech offered similar reactions to that of Kristi. As they walked along cement floors with steel structures to the side and pipes and other infrastructure overhead, they envisioned what the building will look like when it’s complete and learning spaces are inhabited by students and faculty collaborating with businesses. 

Partnering with UW-River Falls and working with students provides a means of finding talented future employees with high-level job skills, said Mark Tyler, who founded and now chairs OEM Fabricators, a Woodville metal fabrication company. He supports SciTech and said it will significantly increase opportunities that will benefit businesses, the university, and the regional economy. 

“We don't know what those specific opportunities are yet,” he said. “But we know the foundation of what is being built. We’ve been strong advocates not because we know the opportunities, but because we know the foundation is there to go off in all kinds of different positive directions that will benefit this region in so many ways.” 

University and business leaders envision SciTech as so much more than a new science building. The facility is being built in such a way as to facilitate faculty and student engagement in state-of-the-art learning spaces with a focus on active learning. 

SciTech will be the new home for physics, biology, chemistry and the psychological sciences, where students from a wide range of majors will engage in immersive high-impact learning experiences. UW-River Falls officials estimate more than 60% of UWRF students will take at least one class in SciTech.  

SciTech will include a University and Business Collaboration Center that will facilitate collaborations between businesses and faculty and students. Faculty and students will partner with companies on research and other projects, providing students with high-level, hands-on learning opportunities and links to workplaces. Businesses will, in turn, benefit from student/faculty efforts and can provide training to future employees. 

“This isn’t your average classroom kind of a building,” Chancellor Maria Gallo said. “It’s lab spaces and areas for experiential learning and collaboration. We’re excited about what SciTech means to the future of UWRF and the entire region.” 

Beth Schommer, chief of staff at UW-River Falls who will oversee the University and Business Collaboration Center, recalls the countless meetings planning SciTech and then convincing state lawmakers to fund the project. Those discussions centered on how SciTech could play a direct role in regional economic development and be relevant to business and industry, she said. 

“We are really going to become the hub for how entrepreneurs interact with students on our campus in the STEM field and beyond,” Schommer said. 

Karl Peterson, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been involved in the planning of SciTech. From setups where students face each other to use of technology to display work in real time, classrooms and lab spaces have been arranged to promote collaborative learning, he said. 

“There is intentional design through and through,” Peterson said, noting SciTech will also include gathering spaces for people to collaborate outside of classrooms. “There is a real focus on collaborative learning.”

State dollars paid for most of SciTech, but UW-River Falls is responsible for raising $5 million from private sources to fully fund the project. Of that total, nearly $4.5 million is in hand, with the remaining $500,000 to be raised by December, said Rick Foy, assistant chancellor for university advancement. He thanked the many donors to the program and said the fundraising effort “demonstrates the power of collaboration” around a project that means so much to the region.

To donate to SciTech, visit uwrf.edu/university-advancement/support-scitech.

“This is a project that will help create the leaders of tomorrow, the leaders of this region,” Foy said. “That is what this project is about.”

Kristi had that same idea as she made her way through SciTech. She envisioned partly finished spaces at their completion, full of students, faculty and business leaders together, working collaboratively.

“That has always been the idea behind this, to get students and faculty working together, working with businesses and having increased collaborative learning opportunities,” she said. “To see this building progressing and to know that is going to happen is really exciting.”