Chancellor Mark Mone and Jim Harvey, senior vice president and chief science officer for NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, check out the beam about to be placed atop UWM's under-construction chemistry building. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Mone, Harvey and Kristen Murphy, professor and chair of chemistry and biochemistry, sign their names to the ceremonial last beam for new chemistry building. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Guests mingle before the start of the ceremony. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
More than 5,000 UWM students take chemistry every year, Chancellor Mark Mone told the crowd. “This is truly foundational to so many fields at UWM,” he said. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Kristen Murphy, professor and chair of chemistry and biochemistry, says the modern facilities in the new building will support learning for students. “Teaching is a focus of what we do.” (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Jim Harvey of NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes said that the UWM students his company hires are excellent. “What we have found is that we can give these young people that we have hired major projects important to our company and they can hit the ground running.” (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Regent Scott Beightol praised UWM, noting that his wife attended the university and his daughter is a current student. “This school is very remarkable,” he said. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Chancellor Mark Mone hits a gong to start the lifting process of the final beam. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
A crane lifts the final beam into place on top of the new chemistry building. (UWM Photo/Marcelo Martinez)
Construction workers install the final beam onto the new chemistry building. Tradition holds that a small fir tree is attached to the final beam. (UWM Photo/Marcelo Martinez)
Dozens of guests gathered Thursday, Jan. 26, for a ceremony to celebrate the topping off of the new chemistry building under construction on UWM’s main campus.
The new four-story, 163,400-square-foot building will serve as a gateway to the STEM buildings and departments that house those subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It will include modern labs and classrooms for the roughly 5,000 UWM students who take chemistry and biochemistry classes each year from all majors.
The building is expected to be completed by late 2023 or early 2024.
