An exciting change is coming to the Quest community next semester. The program will be moving the Quest Lab and faculty offices to the first floor of Van Munching Hall, replacing the Smith Store, SUSA offices, and other miscellaneous offices in the area. The Smith School will complete the construction over the summer, with the new Quest lab and offices open for Fall 2014.

The concept was initially proposed by Quest faculty to a group of 190H mentors in Fall 2013 as a project scope for their mentor class. The team strove to design an innovative, improved interior design to the Quest lab to facilitate more student collaboration, engagement, and efficiency while working and relaxing in the lab. They proposed their ideas to Smith Operations and the University to provide inspiration and ideas for the final decision makers.

The new lab will provide value to the program in three key ways. First, the new lab will be bigger and better. There will be space for printing, team brainstorming, and food consumption. It will be much larger than the current lab, and will be designed more intuitively to teamwork, student relaxation, and student study. The move will help build a greater sense of community between faculty and students, as the offices will be on the same floor as the Quest lab. Students will be able to more easily and effortlessly drop by Quest faculty offices to discuss a project idea, ask a question, or just talk. Finally, it will help make the program more visible and recognizable within the business school by having a lab and offices on the first floor where most classes are taught and student traffic occurs.
The current Quest lab will no longer be used by the program and will be taken by Smith operations, likely for storage.