The design of our New Building is on-schedule and continuing to progress very well. On December 15th, 2020 we reached an important milestone when the State Building Commission approved the UW-Milwaukee Chemistry project with the “Authority to Construct” ($129,535,000). Our “User Group” — Kristen Murphy, Nick Silvaggi, Doug Stafford, Kevin Blackburn, and Joe Aldstadt — has spent many hours representing the Department in a series of monthly workshops that began in February 2018 and will continue through the Spring 2021 semester. With the COVID-19 pandemic,meetings had to be moved on-line and continued throughout the Summer and Fall semesters. The current schedule calls for the Final Design process to conclude in April 2021, the bid to be sent out in May 2021, and construction to start in June 2021 and continue until project completion in late 2023. The images below were prepared by the architects at Cannon Design (Chicago) and Kahler Slater (Milwaukee) for the Pre-Design Report (FEB20) — they depict a lecture hall, the second-level landing, the lobby, and a view from inside the SW Quad of the green space and outdoor seating areas that are planned. We are very excited about the prospect of moving to such a state-of-the-art facility to help our program continue to thrive!