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Scott and Karen Smith cut the ribbon to open a new engineering building Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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The Scott M. Smith Building is pictured Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Scott M. Smith and Utah Valley University President Astrid S. Tuminez cut a ribbon to open the new engineering building Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, in Orem.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Utah Valley University President Astrid S. Tuminez speaks at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new engineering building Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, in Orem.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Utah Valley University celebrated Thursday the opening of a building that will serve as the educational base for some of the school’s most innovative students.

The four-story, 197,000 square-foot Scott M. Smith College of Engineering and Technology Building will bring the numerous engineering and technological programs that serve more than 20% of the student population into a centralized location on the southeast part of campus.

Made possible by a $25 million gift from Qualtrics co-founder Scott Smith and Karen Smith, construction of the building began in September 2023 and opened to classes at the start of this semester.

The facility’s opening comes a year after UVU launched a strategic reinvestment plan, under the direction of the state Legislature, to reallocate $8.9 million to high-impact areas, including engineering and computer science.

“There’s a big vision in Utah for engineering,” UVU President Astrid S. Tuminez said. “The state could hire every single engineer that we graduate, so there’s just a ton of opportunity.”

Creating a building that promoted technological development was the school’s focus, according to Val Peterson, UVU’s vice president for administration and strategic relations.

That was reflected during the ribbon-cutting ceremony inside the building Thursday afternoon, when a robot moved on stage and hand delivered a large pair of scissors.

The facility holds 14 classrooms, 116 offices for faculty, a number of a labs, including a virtual reality lab, an aerodynamics lab and a cybersecurity lab.

“Think about all the space where students can learn, where they can develop their projects,” Val Peterson said. “This space allows them to be able to design the things of the future.”

A bit of last-minute development was needed to just to get the building ready in time. Peterson said when faculty members toured the building on Dec. 12, they said there was no way it would be ready for Jan. 5, to which he responded that they had to, “because I have a promise to the President.” The school and construction team managed to get it done.

Scott and Karen Smith addressed the crowd at the ceremony and spoke on why they chose to give such a generous donation and the importance of education.

“UVU’s commitment to traditional and nontraditional students and first-generation college students helped us realize that we could make a difference in a very profound way,” Karen Smith said.

“We have an obligation to do something more,” Scott Smith said. “It’s about being grateful for the opportunity to do that. We know that an education is important to keep you out of poverty.”

Scott Smith, who is the father of Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth owner Ryan Smith, also reflected on the immense technological progress that has occurred in the last handful of decades and said this facility will be the center of that advancement at UVU.

“What we have here is a training facility,” he said. “This process of transforming is really more like an athlete trying to get an Olympian or to be a professional athlete, because it requires great rigor, and this is a training facility to do that.”