50,000-square-foot engineering building is underway at North Carolina community college

Johnston Community College in Smithfield, N.C., is building a $15 million engineering facility that is scheduled to open next year.

Once complete, the two-story, 50,000-square-foot building will house a virtual reality studio, labs, offices, interactive classrooms, a theater-style lecture hall and more.

The facility will support the college’s expanding Associate in Engineering (AE) program and STEM-related disciplines.

College President David Johnson says the school's engineering program has grown by more than 160 % in six years.

"The faculty and students were doing all this in barely sufficient facilities, but now we will be able to use these new facilities to train and educate for the 21st century,” Johnson says.

The architect is HH Architecture.