The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies Centers and Laboratories

The Drs. E. Lawrence & Adele V. Deckinger Center for Integrated Advertising Communications offers students a dynamic space for ideation, creativity, and hands-on learning. Designed to mirror a professional advertising agency, the center provides students with valuable experiential opportunities and insight into careers in the field. The space is equipped with a touch-down computer hub featuring state-of-the-art Mac stations, Cintiq drawing monitors, large-format printers, writeable walls, and multiple video display screens.

Primarily serving students in the Mass Communication program, the center fosters collaboration through the student-led advertising club, Category 5 as well as providing a space for our Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) & National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) student teams to create award winning designs. Guided by faculty mentors, students use the lab to create and test digital and print content, from advertisements to design concepts. Digital displays throughout the center showcase student projects, photos, and social media content, while the space itself serves as an informal hub for reviewing and critiquing both digital and physical artifacts such as prints, posters, artwork, and photography.

This is a flexible space dedicated to faculty and staff that enhances interdisciplinary communication and collaboration across majors of study. The dynamic layout allows for swift room redesign depending on the needs of the audience. The technology embedded in “the commons” enables distributed and online connectivity, videoconferencing, distance and hybrid learning, and more. Displays are further integrated with the laboratories existing on the same floor to create a common space for distributed work.

The Cyber Security Lab provides students with the opportunity to learn, apply, and practice cyber security. Students work with software and employ techniques for intrusion detection, vulnerability mitigation, network perimeter defense, incident response, network forensics investigation, and malware analysis. The lab is used for both digital and hands-on forensic analysis and uses 2D and 3D cameras and visualizers to capture the hands-on activities and rebroadcast them “live” across the classroom and online.

The CyberStorm Hackathon Lab serves as the dedicated home for our nationally competitive Cyber Security Hackathon team. Recently redesigned, the lab has been air-gapped to provide a fully isolated, closed-network environment—ensuring a high level of security for training, testing, and competition. Beyond competition, the lab also functions as a collaborative hub where students work closely with faculty mentors and industry partners, gaining practical, hands-on experience that prepares them for careers in cybersecurity, digital forensics, and information assurance.

Located alongside our Homeland Security Simulation Lab, this space was modeled after the Decision Room in Washington, D.C., to help Homeland Security students acclimate to a real-world operational environment. Designed as a state-of-the-art, flexible learning space, it features a powered folding wall and movable tables, enabling the entire Sanford Security Wing to be fully transformed and immersed in a classroom or simulation setting.

This lab serves as a hands-on design and testing environment where students learn to develop innovative ideas and transform them into final, market-ready products. While innovation can take many forms, the lab is especially recognized as a hub for high-tech exploration, including virtual reality, 3D printing, and mobile application testing. Student teams engaged in lab-to-market projects are encouraged to use the space under the mentorship of faculty or industry professionals. The lab follows a hybrid model—approximately 50% open lab time and 50% scheduled class time—designed to balance structured learning with independent project development. Courses in Forensic Science, Game Development, Television and Film, Computer Science and Entrepreneurship are also held in this space, making it a truly interdisciplinary environment.

The Homeland Security Simulation Lab provides a true-to-life virtual reality environment where students supplement theoretical examination with the practical experience, decision-making skills, and confidence critical to the successful resolution of future real-life incidents and emergency management scenarios. The lab can create, simulate, and escalate a variety of large-scale incidents, either natural or manmade, including floods, landslides and mudslides, terrorist attacks, structural collapse, WMD and nuclear strikes, wildfires, civil disorder, hazardous material and biological releases, and severe weather conditions, such as hurricanes or tornados all in a realistic, physics-based environment. The lab is used as a classroom and research center supporting the Homeland Security Center of Excellence.

This is a state-of-the-art collaborative space where students focus on all forms of the digital design and commercial arts. The students who use this lab from CCPS and St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences study advertising, animation, graphic design, Illustration, mass communications, photography, public relations, and television and film. In this lab, it is the belief that a design-centric approach is one of the best ways to learn. We have professional-level Mac Studio workstations equipped with 4K Wacom Cintiq Pros and Ultrawide monitors, writable walls, a large table to critique or work, and a museum-quality format printer to print out large designed pieces.

The exterior of the lab serves as a marketing showcase for displaying course-related creative content that was produced by our talented students in class. The “MAD” lab also shares resources with Information Technology; for example, students can also study 3D modeling and additive manufacturing here and have their design prototypes 3D-printed in the next room within the University Technology Commons.