MU/360°
LEADERSHIP
moving forward Dave Lawlor joined campus as executive vice president for operations, a position created as part of a strategic executive realignment, a move President Michael Lovell calls vital to Marquette executing its strategic plan, Beyond Boundaries. A native of Dublin, Ireland, Lawlor earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in finance from California State University –Hayward. He most recently served as vice chancellor and chief financial officer at the University of California– Davis. Read the strategic plan online @ marquette.edu/ strategic-planning.
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MAKING PLANS FOR TOMORROW
blueprint for change Campus master plan’s ambitions call university family to step boldly. This is where we’re going.
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BY CHRISTOPHER STOLARSKI
t’s been more than a half-century since Marquette constructed a residence hall. Today the university is doubling down, constructing a two-tower, $108 million facility for first-year and sophomore students that will bear the name of a beloved former president. The 890–bed Rev. Robert A. Wild, S.J., Commons is the first major product of the university’s newly adopted campus master plan. For the plan’s lead architect, the student-centric facility is a fitting start. “I’m personally so proud that our first master plan project is truly for our students,” Vice President for Planning and Strategy Lora Strigens told a crowd of students, faculty and staff at the groundbreaking ceremony. More bold projects will follow in this construction and renovation plan that will change the physical appearance of campus as well as how the university educates students, conducts research, fosters community, and promotes its mission and values.
One example is called Innovation Alley, a cross-disciplinary facility that will transform the southwest campus corridor by connecting learning labs and more for the entire block between Wisconsin Avenue and Clybourn Street. “Innovation Alley will bring together engineering, business and science into an integrated facility, where students and faculty can look at things all the way from prototype and ideation to taking a product to market,” Strigens says. The facility could also include limited student housing, creating a livinglearning community. Other ideas envisioned in the campus master plan include the widely publicized athletic performance research center; a biodiscovery district that will fuse the hard and health sciences in the south-central portion of campus; a holistic recreation and wellness center on the northeast corner of 16th Street and Wisconsin Avenue; a reimagined Central Mall called the Chapel Lawn; a north commons that brings green space to the area between the Dr. E.J. O’Brien Jesuit Residence and Alumni Memorial Union; and a gateway