Furniture and equipment are being moved in for the new $52 million building on the campus at the College of Eastern Idaho in Idaho Falls as the Aug. 13 grand opening draws closer.

“We have invited over 800 people from all around the state,” said Dr. Lori Barber, CEI president. “We are expecting it to be the event of August for Idaho Falls.”

The official name for CEI’s newest addition is the Battelle Energy Alliance Future Tech Building in partnership with Frontier Credit Union.

Barber said it has been about six years from conceptualization to discussion then funding and breaking ground to reach the point of ribbon cutting.

“We will hold classes in that building this fall,” Barber said. “We are very, very excited.”

The 88,000-square-foot Future Tech Building will house advanced labs, collaborative classrooms and the BEA Applied STEM Institute, an innovative program to connect students with real-world learning and career pathways in science, technology, engineering and math. The Frontier Credit Union Conference Center is a 4,087-square-foot conference space for STEM expert lectures that will also be available for rental as a meeting venue for the broader community.

“We anticipate that building will hold about 1,000 more students,” Barber said. “It will expand our capacity by about 1,000 students.”

That expansion is needed.

“This is definitely a game changer for CEI,” Barber said. “In 2017, we had about 1,000 students. We are going to finish FY26 just shy of 5,000 students. We don’t have the official numbers yet, but it’s going to be very, very close to 5,000 students. That doesn’t even count our workforce training students.”

CEI accomplished all that without increasing its physical footprint.

“We’ve grown with a campus the same size as it was in 2017,” Barber said. “So as you might guess, we’re pretty cramped here on campus. This building is a game changer for CEI, but it is a game changer for the community too.”

BEA, which manages the Idaho National Laboratory, invested $5.5 million to support the building and launch the BEA Applied STEM Institute. The goal is to infuse the STEM pipeline for workforce development.

Frontier contributed $3.5 million to the project and established the Frontier Credit Union CEI Scholarship Program for students preparing for careers in STEM fields.

“I can’t stress enough how excited we are on this campus to be able to continue to grow, not be constrained by space and be able to continue building those programs that our ripe for our community and for our employers,” Barber said. “We feel this is going to be a real economic engine for Eastern Idaho. CEI is really becoming a hub, a destination for students who want to study STEM.”

That is by design.

“We are very proud here at CEI that we invite employers to the table when we’re designing curriculum,” Barber said. “We want to ask them what they need. What is it that you need in a worker? We feel like this building is a culmination in giving them high tech well-trained workers who are ready on day one. They don’t need a ton of time to get situated on the job. On day one, if you’re hiring a CEI employee they are ready to go to work.”

According to Barber, the Future Tech Building will house mechatronics engineering, which is a multidisciplinary field that combines mechanical, electrical, computer and software engineering. It focuses on the design and automation of smart machines, robotics and complex electro-mechanical systems.

“We’re building a high school STEM institute,” Barber said. “It is supplementary to what high school students are learning in their high schools. That was made possible by a generous donation from Battelle Energy Alliance.”

The Future Tech Building will also host some healthcare programs, as well as surgical technology, cybersecurity and agriculture technology.

“It really is a teaching and learning space,” Barber said. “There are only six faculty offices in that building. The rest of that building is for students and teaching and learning.”

CEI never really had a student union since its inception. The sheer size of the Future Tech Building also helps fill that niche.

“It is also going to function as a quasi student union,” Barber said, “because there are so many student spaces in there for them to gather, congregate and study. We’ve never had that before on campus. So we are very excited for our students to have that room.”

Local residents will also benefit.

“There are spaces in there the community can rent out,” Barber said. “We have people that are already reserving spaces for the coming year. The building is an absolute win for everybody.”

Now the task is to get everything into the building.

“We are frantically moving in right now,” Barber said. “We have some programs that are in current buildings that are moving to that building, and then we have some new programs that are going in. All the furniture and equipment that has been ordered for those new programs and of course all of the furniture for everything outside of classrooms is all currently being moved in.”

Hope Noe, CEI procurement specialist, has been especially busy.

“She has just done an extraordinary job of ordering the equipment and furniture and having a schedule for it to arrive and be installed so we can start classes in there this fall,” Barber said.

“She has really worked wonders on staying in budget for what we call FF&E, furniture, fixtures and equipment,” Barber said. “It was a tight budget, and she was extraordinary in getting high-quality furniture, high-quality equipment and staying within our budget.”

According to Noe, her last six months have been monopolized with furnishing the new building.

“It was a lot of work,” she said. “I came in really, really close to budget. I worked hard with my vendors, and I got us quality items. It is going to be absolutely beautiful over there.”

Semitruck deliveries started last week and will continue this week and next, Noe said.

“It will be all furnished and up and ready to go for the grand opening,” she said, also crediting the work of Gordon Siepert, CEI supervisor of maintenance and operations.

“We’re currently working on the punch list,” Barber said, in reference to punch list items like paint touch-ups, fixing drywall scuffs and functional testing managed by the general contractor. “We expect everything to be done by Aug. 13. Monday the 17th, that’s when classes start.”

Gov. Brad Little, John Wagner, INL director, Park Price, CEI board chairman, Dan Thurman, Frontier president and CEO, Dr. Rick Aman, CEI founding president, and Barber are scheduled to make remarks at the ribbon cutting. Many state legislators and members of the Idaho State Board of Education are expected to be in attendance.

“We are very, very grateful for community support of not only CEI but that building, and we invite the whole community to celebrate with us,” Barber sadi. “While it is life changing for CEI, it is also for the community.”