DLR Group and Gould Evans has designed the Missouri Innovation Campus, a school that is changing the way students experience education, located in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

A progressive partnership between Lee’s Summit R-7 School District, Metropolitan Community College, and the University of Central Missouri (UCM) is reshaping the way students experience education at the new Missouri Innovation Campus (MIC) in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. DLR Group and design partner Gould Evans created a space that focuses on learner outcomes in an immersive and rich real-life workplace experience.

In approximately the same time it takes students to complete their high school curriculum, they will have earned an associate degree from Metropolitan Community College, and can finish their four-year bachelor’s degree from UCM two years later. These benefits translate into earlier graduate, less college debt, and higher job placement. Graduates also will have completed three years of paid internships with prestigious Kansas City metro-area companies, which helps defray the costs of their education and provides students with job-ready skills that are highly sought after by businesses around the world.

The new 135,000 SF building design features 60 classrooms, including shared spaces for the school district and university programs as well as spaces designated for each organization. MIC also features medical school-caliber skilled nursing labs and simulation rooms, professional quality digital media technology, high-tech engineering, biomedical, and computer science instruction areas, and an international studies area with state-of-the-art distance learning technology. The programs – networking, engineering, medical, bio medical, graphics, hospitality, and cybersecurity – are segregated into quadrants within the building and split on two floors for ease of wayfinding.

Throughout the building its character takes on a sense of academia meets Google with a commitment to create incidental contact that results in collaboration between students, teachers, and higher education faculty. Learning and teaching happens everywhere. Industry partners are encouraged to use hoteling spaces and the conference center to see and be seen by students of the facility. Industry leaders in the hi-tech medical records field, logistics experts, and global engineering firms are a part of day-to-day activities and learning that occurs in the building.

Architect of Record: DLR Group
Designer: Gould Evans
Contractor: McCownGordon Construction
Photography: Michael Robinson