From: Hank Levy <levy@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 12:30 PM
Subject:Exciting building milestones
To: ugrads@cs.washington.edu, vgrads@cs.washington.edu
Dear Allen School family,
I have some great news to share with you regarding our second building, the Bill & Melinda Gates Center, going up across the street.
First, we have reached the halfway point of construction with the “topping out,” a tradition among ironworkers that marks the placement of the final steel beam on a large building or other structure. At this point, our new building has reached its maximum height, and the construction crew is ready to begin work on the enclosure and interior. I am pleased to report that this puts us on track to complete work on schedule by the end of next year.
We also have achieved another important milestone: thanks to a gift of $15 million from Bill and Melinda Gates, we have officially concluded our building fundraising! You may recall that around two dozen of their longtime friends and colleagues got together earlier this fall to support a naming gift in the couple’s honor. We are thrilled that Bill and Melinda themselves were inspired by our vision to help us across the finish line with their own generous gift.
As we have seen through their work with Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda are first and foremost driven to have an impact — on innovation, on people’s lives, and on society as a whole. The building will equip us to expand our impact on all three, with new labs, classrooms, offices, and collaboration spaces that will help us deliver an unparalleled experience to more students and continue pushing the boundaries of our field through research. But that requires more than bricks and mortar — now we have to fill that building with the people who will generate the breakthrough innovations of tomorrow.
Thanks to Bill and Melinda and the more than 300 individual and corporate donors who came together to support our building project, we can now turn our attention to the second phase of the Campaign for CSE: support for the faculty and students who make the Paul G. Allen School great.
As we begin this next phase, I want to give special thanks to Ed Lazowska, whose tireless efforts have enabled us to secure the resources that have transformed us into one of the preeminent computer science programs. We are extremely grateful to Microsoft President Brad Smith who has provided tremendous leadership on behalf of our volunteer campaign committee. I also want to recognize Paul Beame, Tracy Erbeck, and Aaron Timss for their contributions to the design and construction efforts. And thanks to each and every one of you for being a vital member of the Allen School community.
You can read more about our latest milestones in the UW News release.
Onward and upward!
Hank