The $39.8-million Luddy Hall is expected to complete construction in December 2017.Photo courtesy of Indiana UniversityBLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Bloomington celebrated a groundbreaking and announced the lead donor on a new building for the IU School of Informatics and Computing on Oct 2.

The $39.8 million, 124,000-square-foot building to accommodate the rapid growth of students, faculty and programs at the school is expected to complete construction in December 2017.

Private donations will fund at least $10 million of the building’s construction, including $8 million from former IU student Fred Luddy, a member of the dean’s advisory council at the School of Informatics and Computing and founder of ServiceNow, a Silicon Valley-based company that delivers cloud-based, automated IT help desk services. 

The new building will be named Luddy Hall in recognition of the gift and in honor of the many IU alumni in the Luddy family, including Fred's mother, father, sister and two brothers. This gift counts toward the $2.5 billion campaign, For All: The Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign.

Over the past eight years, undergraduate enrollment and research funding has tripled at the IU School of Informatics and Computing, with informatics now the third-largest undergraduate major on campus. Graduate enrollment has also more than doubled, with computer science now the second largest Master of Science degree program and second largest Ph.D. program on campus, and faculty members risen from 74 to 111 over this same time period.

"As we break ground for Luddy Hall, we look forward to what will be a magnificent new home for a school that has been a prime example of how the manifestations of Indiana University's missions have changed quite dramatically in response to the needs of students and the demands of our state and nation,” said IU President Michael A. McRobbie, who spoke at the groundbreaking. “Designed to encourage collaboration and community, this facility will provide much-needed teaching and research space in light of the enormous growth our School of Informatics and Computing, the broadest and one of the largest schools of its kind in the United States, has undergone in recent years. 

"We are profoundly grateful to Fred Luddy for his extraordinarily generous gift, which is testament to his belief in providing students with the skills they need to succeed and instilling in them the values and principles that will guide them in their careers and lives."

Other speakers at the ceremony were Bobby Schnabel, dean of the IU School of Informatics and Computing; Jeremy Siek, an associate professor, and Elli Bourlai, a doctoral student in information and library science, of the school; and Fred Luddy.

"This building is designed to encourage an atmosphere of both collaboration and community and a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, combining the best qualities of academia and the tech sector," Schnabel said. "So much of what happens at our school is predicated upon the right combination of people, technology and applications -- this new building will give our entire school the proximity, environment and tools to collaborate and thrive."

Two academic units will relocate to the new building -- computer science and information and library science -- vacating their current spaces in Lindley Hall and the Herman B Wells Library, respectively. The new building will also house the school’s new Intelligent Systems Engineering department. Support services, including career services, undergraduate services, the offices of diversity and education, and IT staff, also will move to the new building.

Located along Woodlawn Avenue between Cottage Grove Avenue and 11th Street, just north of the school’s current 70,000-square-foot location, the new L-shaped building will be the first constructed in IU’s Woodlawn Corridor, which will link the athletic facilities on the north edge of campus with the core campus.

Highlights of the new building include a 3,500-square-foot innovation center, a flexible incubator environment with space for existing and aspiring entrepreneurial projects at the school; and a 1,500-square-foot fabrication lab, or “fab lab,” which will house maker technologies, such as 3-D printers, in a vibrant, hands-on space.

Other key building features are:

• A grand civic porch serving as the entrance to the building
• An atrium to connect the porch to the interior of the courtyard
• Paved plazas in the courtyard for outdoor dining, public gatherings and seasonal events
• A 160-seat collaborative auditorium on the ground floor with views of the eastern courtyard
• A café open to the public with an extensive menu selection
• A 1,360-square-foot student community center
• A third-floor multipurpose conference and board room
• Seven classrooms ranging from 25 to 160 seats
• Three labs ranging from 25 to 35 seats
• Five labs dedicated to Intelligent Systems Engineering
• 19 conference and focus rooms
• 264 graduate work stations
• 97 faculty offices
• 36 staff offices
• 21 undergraduate advising and career services offices
• 11 interview rooms

The four-and-a-half story, environmentally sustainable structure was designed by Connecticut-based architectural firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, in collaboration with the Indianapolis-based firm, Ratio.

IU plans to pursue LEED Gold certification for the building.