On April 17, 2025, a crowd of several hundred students, staff, faculty, university leaders, alumni and dignitaries kicked off construction of the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering’s new building at a ceremonial groundbreaking event.
The 395,000-square-foot Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center—named by brothers and UW-Madison alumni Marvin (BS ’68, JD ’71) and Jeffrey (BS ’72) Levy in memory of their elder brother, Phil (BS ’64)—will occupy a prominent 2.5-acre site in the heart of the engineering campus. “The Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center will be a hub for learning, exploration, discovery and innovation for all who use and visit it,” said Ian Robertson, Grainger Dean of the College of Engineering, at the event. “Importantly, it provides an even greater opportunity for our college to benefit humanity through our intertwined missions of education and research.”
Wisconsin’s legislature and Gov. Tony Evers approved funding for the building in March 2024. “Our UW System is one of our state’s greatest assets, and making sure our campuses can deliver the world-class education students expect and deserve and that our state needs to build the workforce of tomorrow must be a top priority,” said Evers. “I’m incredibly proud of our work fighting to ensure this project received critical state support and investments. While getting this project done wasn’t without its challenges, we’re thrilled to be breaking ground on an engineering building that’s going to help graduate thousands of new engineers and have a tremendous impact on the students and faculty that teach and learn here as well as on our state, our workforce, and our future.”
In keeping with the design philosophy of its namesake, the architecturally stunning Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center will be welcoming, light-filled and human-centered. Through form as well as function, it will showcase engineering and unite people. Through experiential learning, emerging research, and dedicated industry partnership space, it will stimulate discovery and spark new ideas that will fuel innovation and economic growth in communities, our state and beyond. “This is an exciting day for us. We are thrilled to see the beginning of construction on the fantastic Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center. It is such a game-changer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the College of Engineering,” said Marv Levy. “We are excited to see the resulting elevation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to a new level of success educating both the students and the engineers of the future.”
The new building will allow the college to provide a relevant, top-quality Wisconsin engineering education to an even greater number of talented students. Currently, the college has the space to educate only about a tenth of all applicants. “With today’s groundbreaking, we are on the path both to meeting more of the growing demand for the engineering education we offer and to further strengthening the excellence of those opportunities,” said Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin. “This combination is a win for our talented students, for Wisconsin employers who are urgently asking for well-educated engineers, and for all who benefit from our pioneering faculty research. I am immensely grateful to everyone whose hard work and generosity has turned the vision of this building into a reality.”
The ceremonial groundbreaking marked just the third time the college has begun construction of completely new engineering academic buildings in nearly six decades.
For the event, attendees gathered inside Engineering Hall, where floor-to-ceiling windows in the spacious Huibregste Commons atrium provided an apt backdrop—the fenced future building site—for a stage, podium and dignitaries. Since late-summer 2024, much of the site has undergone a massive enabling project that is modernizing century-old infrastructure and outdated systems ahead of the new building.
A “mound of ground” adjacent to the stage served as a safer, less chaotic construction-site proxy for the 20 dignitaries wearing hard hats and wielding specially crafted shovels adorned with gold handles and gold blades etched with the outline of the Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center. Staff in the college’s Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Laboratory customized each shovel shaft to include a capsule that contains soil from the building site, while engineering students presented the shovels and escorted the dignitaries to the dig site.
For Robertson, the event was the culmination of more than six years of planning and advocacy on the part of countless alumni, friends, industry partners, university leaders and others. “The next chapter in our college’s history has begun—and everyone here in this room has played a role in getting us to this point,” he said. “Now, the Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center will allow our college to grow in size and, importantly, in impact. We can’t wait to fill the building with an even greater number of incredibly talented people, let their boundless energy and creativity soar, and see where their enthusiasm and ideas take us next.”
The building’s architectural and engineering team is Continuum Architects + Planners, S.C., in association with SmithGroup & Ring & DuChateau, LLP. Findorff is the building’s construction firm. GRAEF is the structural engineer of record.