Wichita State’s Innovation Campus will be outfitted with all new computers for use in the Experiential Engineering Building.

Tuesday afternoon, the WSU Foundation announced that Cybertron International pledges to provide the new computers. The gift in total is estimated to cost $2.5 million.

“The $2.5 million is the value of computers … monitors and five years of desktop support … Every computer that’s in the [Experiential Engineering] Building that’s part of a student’s education will be provided by [Cybertron],” said Royce Bowden, dean of the College of Engineering at WSU.

There will be 25 instructional laboratories in the Experiential Engineering Building — which is scheduled to be complete in October — and Cybertron’s computers will fill those rooms, Bowden said.

Many of the new computers will be gaming computers, which Cybertron specializes in.

“Realistically, gaming computers are able to handle very sophisticated software, similar to some gaming software. And, really, that’s what the Flight Simulation is. It’s like a game,” Bowden said.

 The 2,000-square-feet Flight Simulation and Gaming Hub room will be one of the 25 labs in the Experiential Engineering Building. That room, in particular, will have gaming computers. During the day, students can utilize the Flight Simulation functions of the computers for practice in aerospace-related engineering pursuits. In the evening, the room can be used as a Gaming Hub in which students can hang out and play PC games on the computers.

To recognize the pledge from Cybertron International, WSU will place Cybertron’s name on the Flight Simulation and Gaming Hub room.

“All of us recognize the importance of education,” Cybertron CEO Ahmed Aziz said in a news release from the university. “We’re particularly excited to see WSU taking giant steps toward developing students who can contribute creatively to a world that is changing so rapidly, especially in the area of technology.”

Freshman Eric Randall is familiar with PC gaming.

“Gamers that actually go here will have a place to hang out and meet new people [with the Gaming Hub]. So I think it’ll be great,” Randall said.

Randall plays PC games such as Smite and Hearthstone, and he’s part of the Wichita E-Sports Hearthstone group.

“I’ve heard of Cybertron before,” he said. “They supplied computers for the Wichita E-Sports competition.”

The company has connections to WSU; their founders have all studied at the university, and two of their founders are graduates.

“We’ve been studying the possibilities of this gift for about eight months,” Bowden said.

Now that the pledge is public, Innovation Campus efforts continue to move forward, Bowden said. After the Experiential Engineering Building is completed this fall, it will be open for business around January 2017.

“Because of Cybertron’s vision and generosity, our students will have the best computing and tech support available to any engineering student in the world,” Bowden said.