WPI’s beautiful campus and extensive facilities are critically important to its continuing success as a high-performance university, producing women and men well prepared for the rigors, opportunities, and challenges of 21st century life. In addition to classrooms, laboratories, and residence halls, the campus must provide those types of spaces and facilities that foster individuals’ physical development, healthy lifestyles, and spirit of both cooperation and high achievement outside the academic domain.

Early in the 20th century, WPI’s Alumni Association recognized this need, raising funds for the creation of Alumni Gym, our first sports and recreation facility, which opened in 1916. The WPI Trustees recognized a similar need at the turn of century, creating the Campus Center, which quickly became a crossroads and meeting ground for a broad range of student activities and campus events. Both of these transformational facilities were vital to WPI’s continuing development as an outstanding institution of higher education, just as the WPI Plan had brought a bold, new model for engineering education in 1970.

The WPI community has long outgrown both the capacity and functionality of Alumni Gym. Club and intramural teams compete with varsity programs for very small amounts of space, the pool is no longer adequate for competition, and burgeoning academic programs, such as robotics engineering, need larger demonstration and competition spaces than are available presently on the campus. Just as the Campus Center provides essential social activity space, an urgent and compelling need exists to create:

A New Sports and Recreation Center at WPI

Beginning with the purpose of replacing the core fitness and recreation facilities of Alumni Gym, a planning activity involving a fruitful collaboration among faculty, staff, students, administration, and trustees has resulted in an exciting plan for a new facility to meet a remarkably broad suite of campus needs. Located at the west end of the quad, overlooking both the quadrangle to the east and the playing fields to the west, the new Sports and Recreation Center (SRC) will contain 140,000 usable square feet of space providing:

• A modern 25 meter (stretch) swimming pool, with spectator seating for 250, to support varsity swimming and diving competition as well as recreational swimming;

• A four-court, 29,000 square-foot gymnasium housing intramural and recreational basketball, pre-season spring sports practice, and events too large to be accommodated in the Campus Center or Harrington Auditorium.

• Excellent connectivity to Harrington Auditorium, leveraging the functionality of both facilities and creating the capacity to host major events such as national and international conferences, U.S. FIRST Robotics and Lego League competitions, admissions office open houses, alumni and reunion events, etc.;

• An elevated, three-lane running track around the perimeter of the gym;

• An 11,000 square-foot fitness center providing cardio-fitness and free weight training areas, for both varsity athletes and casual users, as well as separate areas for physical education classes;

• Additional 5,000 square feet of multi-purpose spaces, including three convertible racquetball and squash courts, an eight-person rowing tank, and rooms for dance, physical education classes, and other types of meetings;

• A 10,500 square-foot mezzanine “bonus” space, resulting from building into the sloping grade of the quad, that will provide ideal space for robotics competition;

• Proper offices, meeting, and training spaces for our deserving coaches, professional staff, and student employees of the Physical Education, Recreation, and Athletics Department.

The Need for this Facility

There are several compelling reasons to create this new facility, and to do so now.

First, WPI students see this facility as the most important campus need, primarily because of the importance to them of leading a healthy life-style. Whether they are varsity athletes, members of club or intramural teams, or simply individuals committed to fitness and physical recreation, our high-achieving students understand the value of relieving stress, enjoying each others’ company, and performing at a high level in physical activity as well as in academic and artistic pursuits. They expect and deserve this type of facility.

Second, in order for WPI to remain competitive for the strongest students, we must provide campus facilities on par with those of our competitors. In recent years nearly all of our noteworthy competitors, including RPI, RIT, MIT, and Boston University, have invested in such facilities, some considerably more extensive than what WPI proposes. Students’ college selection criteria have expanded beyond academics to include campus amenities, of which sports and fitness facilities are as important as residence and dining halls, performance spaces, information technology services, and libraries. While we do not expect that more than a few students will choose WPI because of these facilities, we are increasingly concerned that very many will begin to decline to come here because of the lack of such facilities.

Third, our present facilities are seriously outdated and not nearly sufficient to support today’s student body. When Alumni Gym was built in 1916, WPI enrolled 539 men, a number less than one-fifth of the current undergraduate enrollment. When Harrington Auditorium was completed in 1968, the year women were first admitted to WPI, enrollment was 1,649 students. No athletics facility has been constructed at WPI since women were first admitted, and the student body today numbers approximately 4,000, well over twice the size for which existing facilities were designed.

Fourth, the campus badly needs meeting spaces of greater capacity than any of the current large venues (Harrington Auditorium, Alden Memorial, or the Campus Center) can provide, especially with the lack of air-conditioning in Harrington Auditorium. Our academic programs are becoming more distinguished and complex, with new initiatives such as robotics engineering and our Business School. Given our aspirations for greater recognition and leadership in higher education nationally and internationally, the availability of the large spaces in this facility and its connectivity to Harrington Auditorium will greatly increase our capacity to host major events of many types.

Fifth, WPI has developed a truly outstanding varsity sports program, one deserving more adequate facilities and other types of support. Building on a long tradition of excellence in football, wrestling, and several other sports, our men’s and women’s basketball teams both won their league titles in 2008. The men moved into second-round competition in the NCAA tournament and the women won the ECAC tournament. Competing in a very tough Liberty League, football has achieved recognized strength and two winning seasons of the past three. The men’s crew team competed for the first time in 2009 in the prestigious Henley Relays in England, and the other teams made similar strong showings. Achievement at the highest levels pervades our varsity athletics program no less than it does our academic programs, project teams, artistic performances, and student leadership. Varsity athletes at WPI, as a group, exceed the campus-wide grade point average for undergraduates. The physical development of our students, and their high personal achievement in physical activities and competition, go hand in hand with their academic and artistic achievement and contribute importantly to the growth and development of the whole person. Proper facilities to support this characteristic of our students and our academic community are simply essential. Moreover, we run one of the leanest Physical Education, Recreation, and Athletics divisions in NCAA Division III as regards staffing. Our coaches teach classes as well as coach (a rarity), many of our varsity sports make do with part-time coaches (resulting in frequent turn-over of coaches), and our Athletics Director operates the PERA division without the assistance of an associate director, a common, full-time position at most competing institutions. The PERA division is a model of efficiency and high performance on the campus.

Finally, these badly needed facilities for fitness and recreation will comprise an important investment in the health and morale of our faculty and staff, no less than of our students. “Heal thyself” is an important message that is supported by this type of facility, leading to a healthier and more productive campus community.

The Enhancement to the Campus

Built into the bank at the west end of the quad, the new SRC will complete a traditional quadrangle with a beautiful two-story brick and glass façade relating well to both Harrington Auditorium on the north and Morgan Hall on the south. The view of the SRC from the west, along Park Avenue and the playing fields, however, will be of a full five-story facility, majestic yet tastefully varied in form and texture. The SRC will increase the functionality of the playing fields, connect efficiently to Harrington Auditorium, and provide easy access from the parking facility eventually to be constructed beneath the current baseball and softball fields.

Two additional benefits result from this planned facility. The first is that, once completed, the relocation of athletics function from Alumni Gym will enable the removal of the structure currently connecting Alumni Gym to Harrington Auditorium. This will open a greenway, flowing from the quad, between Alumni Gym and Harrington, continuing down into the beautiful Higgins House gardens and on to the west side of the Campus Center. This greenway will create a new connectivity to the campus, bring a wonderful aesthetic enhancement to the feel of the quad, and open the Higgins House gardens to much fuller appreciation.

The other is that Alumni Gym, once vacated, will stand available for reuse as an academic facility, quite possibly as a type of innovation center for student project work, entrepreneurial activity, or other creative pursuits. Regardless of its eventual use, this beautiful building with “great bones,” once untethered from Harrington, would stand again as a proud landmark of WPI’s truly remarkable history and mission.