Penn State Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building

A New Home for Penn State's Liberal Arts Department

The Susan Welch Building will be a six story structure that includes both a penthouse and a basement. The building will be located on north side of Fischer Road between the Donald H. Ford Building and Mateer Building, along West Park Avenue. The completed building will house College of Liberal Arts Departments, including Anthropology, Sociology & Criminology, Political Science and the School of Public Policy; the Population Research Institute; the School of International Affairs; General Instructional Classrooms and the Matson Museum of Anthropology. The project will be pursuing LEED certification and will also be implementing some principles from WELL Buildings.

The building will be approximately 134,800 sq. ft. and contain general purpose classrooms, instructional laboratories, dry (data driven) research space, wet (fume hood) research space, museum/collections space, faculty offices, graduate offices and administrative support areas. The building’s structure consists of spread and continuous footings, concrete foundation walls, structural steel frame and concrete slab on deck. The exterior walls will be a combination of brick, limestone, metal panels, curtainwall and glazing. Roofs are located on almost every floor and consist of green roof, concrete paver roofs and EPDM roofs. Skylights will be provided at the roof over the 2 story building area. The project requires a substantial amount of site utility work prior to the start of construction including re-feeding utilities to the Ford Building for storm, sanitary, steam, chws/chwr, electric and tele/data prior to the start of the building construction.