Student Living

The Campus Recreation Center has a 6,500-square-foot dual-level fitness area equipped with dozens of pieces of cardio-vascular and strength training equipment, basketball, racquetball and squash courts and a one-eighth-mile rubber compound running track. The Olympic-size swimming pool at Costello Gym has open hours throughout the week.

The Critical Listening and Recording Studio, Sound Recording Technology’s newest classroom, has a surround sound system with two-channel audio-playback and SLS loud speakers and is acoustically perfect.

Across every college, students are encouraged to participate in service learning courses. Examples of recent ones are:

• Plastics Engineering Prof. Bob Malloy and his students, partnering with civil engineers at Tufts University, have developed the technology to turn recycled plastic and fly ash into building blocks similar to cinder blocks. Malloy and his students worked in Barbados to develop a process that creates roof shingles from discarded plastic trash.
  
• The Assistive Technology Program engages senior engineering students with challenging problems that require technology adaptations to meet the specific needs of disabled persons. In 2003, senior Richard Castle invented the world’s first sensory shoes for the blind, equipped with infrared sensors that detect and alert the wearer to obstructions.
  
• The July 2003 trip marked the thirteenth time UMass Lowell Energy Engineering students and faculty have traveled to Peru on an international service project in which they have installed 50 renewable energy systems in 16 remote villages in the high Andes mountains.