One of the newest buildings on Penn State’s University Park campus is closed until further notice after a “localized structural issue” damaged the building.
The Centre Daily Times reports that firefighters were called to the Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building at about 1:35 p.m. Wednesday after a “sound of an explosion" was reported. The building was evacuated, and crews found a crack in a wall of the building that stretched from the second floor to the fifth floor. No injuries were reported.
In a news release Thursday, the university said no foul play is suspected. The Office of Physical Plant engineers and outside experts will conduct an examination to determine the cause of the damage. The $128 million building opened in the spring.
“Students who had classes in that building should watch for communication from their instructors regarding the location and format of their classes for the rest of the fall semester,” the university said.
The 143,000-square-foot, six-story building brought several academic units, labs, centers, institutes and other learning spaces under one roof, including anthropology, political science, sociology and criminology, public policy, the criminal justice research center, the Matson Museum of Anthropology, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the Social Science Research Institute and general purpose classrooms.
