1 Year Later, It’s Hard to Envision Kettering Without Learning Commons

Walking through the brightly lit space, you can’t tell the Learning Commons has only been open to students for about a year. Students have made it part of their everyday lives, and alumni who have visited the space are impressed. 

It was the first new building on campus in 20 years. Construction on the 105,000-square-foot state-of-the-art Learning Commons began Feb. 5, 2020. The University had a soft opening in July 2022, then Kettering hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $63 million facility in September. The building includes a dozen d.spaces; a 200-seat auditorium; a 15,000-square-foot Maker Space; 1,600 square feet of rooftop space with hammocks and additional seating; an art gallery; and a meditation room. Students use the space for pretty much everything: studying, eating, having club meetings, raising money for philanthropies—the list goes on. 

For Katee Callicutt ’27, it has a space for anyone, regardless of their work.

“It’s just a really fun space,” she said. “It’s not like a typical college where you sit at a lunch table and do work. You can go to different environments. If you get bored of one, you can just go to another.”