In true Miner fashion, the Miner Alumni Association will use silver and gold pick axes to break ground on its new Hasselmann Alumni House. The groundbreaking will be held at 3 p.m. Friday, April 23, at the corner of 11th and Pine streets.

Speakers at the event will include Perrin Roller, president of the Miner Alumni Association; Micah Weber of Fairview Heights, Ill., a senior in computer engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology and the president of STAT – Students Today, Alumni Tomorrow; and Missouri S&T Chancellor John F. Carney III. The event is open to the public.

The new facility will provide meeting and conference space for alumni returning to the community and will house the alumni association’s administrative offices. The 8,000-square-foot, two-story Hasselmann Alumni House is named in honor of Karl and Marjory Hasselmann, whose estate has provided $15 million to the campus.

Mr. Hasselmann was a 1925 mining engineering graduate of the university. His system for underwater oil exploration led to the world’s first underwater oil field and the first offshore oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Miner Alumni Association will launch a fundraising campaign to complete the building by August 2012.

Following the groundbreaking will be a Campaign Celebration at 4 p.m. in Leach Theatre of Castleman Hall, to recognize the success of S&T’s seven-year Advancing Excellence Campaign. Both events are part of Missouri S&T’s Miner Pride Weekend, which also includes many university advisory board meetings, a scholarship banquet and a weekend meeting of the Order of the Golden Shillelagh, the university’s major donor organization.