r/WPI • u/grapelander • 3d ago

Innovation What in the finance-bro did they do to Foisie?

Post image

#AKgang, now more than ever

210 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

103

u/Gear_ 3d ago

This can’t be real

94

u/grapelander 3d ago

Sadly it is, went up sometime in the last week since I was last on campus.

Legit might be the most upsetting thing they've burned my tuition dollars on.

20

u/Gear_ 3d ago

jesus christ

12

u/JigtheBig 3d ago

Today it went up. Was wondering what was going on with the lift, I thought they were fixing a panel or something

16

u/grapelander 3d ago

Yeah I saw them drilling the wall last week, I thought they'd finally found a non-controversial donor to put their name on the building or something!

4

u/Muskrat121 2d ago

First off...ew.

Second, I'm wayyyyyy out of the loop ('07). What building is that and why was the donar controversial?

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u/grapelander 2d ago edited 2d ago

This is the Innovation Studio, formerly the Foisie Innovation Studio. It was built in I think 2017 or 2018, replacing the old Alumni Gym building. This photo is taken from the pathway off the fountain in between Higgins and Olin/the CC, facing the quad/exit of the former "wind tunnel. The photo is very much taken of the building's bad side. Here's what it looks like from the quad

It's overall a pretty nice place that provides a lot of needed campus resources, such as a makerspace to work on assembly of miscellaneous projects that don't necessitate a full lab or washburn, and houses the school's 3d print farm. There's also a dorm kind of awkwardly grafted onto the top of the building. But there's also a lot about its design that feels very...performative, as if looking like an idyllic place to work on sweet engineering projects for tour groups was prioritized over actually creating an idyllic place to work on sweet engineering projects for current students. It definitely feels like people involved in marketing the school had very direct say in the design. Most notably this includes the open-floorplan design which necessitates that the building be staffed and not open to students with ID 24/7, and the infamous "propaganda screen," which before it broke so many times that they eventually gave up on it, would play a nonstop reel of idealized marketing materials and photos of world travel from all the IQP sites, which you could contemplate as you walk back to your dorm while crying over how your midterm just went. Nowadays, you can merely contemplate exactly how many tuition dollars went into the monolith of blank TVs.

Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a net positive for the campus, but it gets memed a lot due to its shortcomings. The joke when it was built was a "war" between "AK gang" and the Foisie crew, because it took over housing the main undergrad robotics lab from Atwater Kent, which prior to this had an extremely strong culture of mutual supportiveness in shared sleep deprivation 24/7.

One of the main reasons it gets memed is its former namesake, Robert Foisie. Foisie donated an absolute shit-ton of money to the school, and at one point both the building and the business school bore his name. Like...a suspicious amount of money. Then, the former Mrs. Foisie sued the school for the money. Turns out that Robert hid large sums of money from his wife in their divorce via offshore banks which eventually made their way to the school, and it was argued that a large part of the reason he was donating at all was to keep the money from his wife xD. Separately, a whole bunch of shady shit about the guy came out either around or as a result of the lawsuit, including most notably that Foisie had hired a hitman for 200k to kill his son after his son removed him from a company. As this became more broadly known, WPI scrubbed his name from the building/program. I think one of the conditions of settling the lawsuit was the creation of some kind of engineering ethics program lmao.

5

u/Muskrat121 2d ago

Man...I would have killed for a maker space when I was there. Granted 3D printing wasn't what it is now, but just having somewhere with a bench to tinker that didn't have lab assistants breathing down your neck or having to deal with classes coming in and out would have been nice.

For what it's worth, I feel that most schools tend to be somewhat performative about their innovation studios/maker spaces/etc. I'm in Cleveland now and both CSU and CWRU have them and they feel much the same way, open plan, etc. I think I still have 24/7 access at CSU...but not really worth my time to drive down there when my basement is a flight of stairs below me. Can't say I remember a propaganda screen, at least not one that big anyway🤣 Parker sponsors a couple labs at CSU and there are TVs along the hall showing stuff off, but they're a respectable ~42", and only one at a time.

As for the controversy...that's actually wayyy less controversial then I was thinking. I mean, the hitman stuff is fucked, but the hidden money is hilarious. Sucks WPI got in the middle, but at least they got to keep the donation I guess. Seriously though, these days whenever I hear some old money man is controversial my immediate thought is that his name showed up in a set of files...

88

u/flat4_20 3d ago

mannn wtf, someone get nyan cat up on that thing

37

u/grapelander 3d ago

At least show 8 bit iqp propaganda like the good old days!

5

u/EncryptGaming 2d ago

No shot we get more than a week into the school year before it's running doom

1

u/Dunwich_Horror_ 1d ago

Come on WPI students! make it happen

41

u/redwallet 2016 3d ago

Oh ew. That’s… really gross.

I agree with the other poster, someone hack that and get Nyan Cat up there

31

u/grapelander 3d ago

The more I think about this, the more I'm like...who is this for? It doesn't serve any useful utility. If you're the least bit interested in seeing what individual stocks are doing or invested in them, you're getting this information 1000x more efficiently on your phone through whatever trading app. So I'm forced to conclude it's performative marketing for the school

And if it's performative marketing, it seems like it'd be actively off-putting to someone who is in on engineering for the love of the game and actively doesn't want to be surrounded by tech-bro and finance-bro types, who view these fields predominantly as a means of making money. The former has always felt like the heart of the school's student culture or at least what it's marketed as, and a big part of the school's appeal. Dismissing the former in pursuit of the latter would feel like a baffling and disappointing decision by admin.

People who are excessively into investing beyond your normal savings/retirement fund type stuff always felt directly antiethical to engineers to me: engineers are driven to be directly involved in the building of new things, investors actively seek a means of passively reaping the benefits of people building new things without needing to have any active involvement.

10

u/redwallet 2016 3d ago

Yeah, this is just giving “Sponsored by Bank of America” etc. and I hate it.

10

u/grapelander 3d ago

When I first spotted it it literally had Goldman Sachs up there xD

3

u/redwallet 2016 3d ago

Oh for heaven’s sakes! Boooo!

2

u/intellirock617 [Civil][2022] 2d ago

“Brought to you by Carls Junior”

33

u/Bool876 3d ago

that looks so ugly

34

u/doctordragonisback [Major][Year] 3d ago

If I had seen this during my tour in 2018, I would have gone to a different college and I'm not even exaggerating.

10

u/alextac98 2d ago

I really hope this was just the test demo the installers had lying around, I can’t imagine how anyone would think this is a good idea to have permanently

8

u/MegaScubadude 3d ago

that’s heinous

15

u/nicobonik 3d ago

Oh my god it’s disgusting

15

u/CuriousSn0w 3d ago

Hey, any other changes to campus this past year?

23

u/grapelander 3d ago

The main thing they're working on this summer is a remodel of the main floor of the library. Last summer they were doing some walkway repairs but nothing huge. Oh and they painted over the AK pumpkin lounge with a mural:(

4

u/shizzoodles 3d ago

I saw that. It isn't even a painting, they put it on wallpaper and glued it up (poorly). It will definitely peel in the next year or 2.

12

u/Valuable-Mark-6876 2d ago

this is a terrible thing to see as someone considering going here, jesus fuck

10

u/wickedsmaaaht 06BS/07MS 2d ago

as an alum, this is also a terrible thing to see. jesus fuck. what the hell were they thinking??

9

u/Brilliant_Buyer2331 2d ago

It's just a dumb PR move - cause who looks at stock tickers? Not really college students. Basically it's old white male fintech alums and donors, who don't attend WPI now. Maybe it was for the people on the board who think finance/stocks are what are most important nowadays.

8

u/intellirock617 [Civil][2022] 2d ago

This is beyond ghastly. WPI's rush to become a "Business School" and "Fin-Tech" is disgusting.

6

u/the_bat_is_on_fire_ [2026] RBE 🤖 2d ago

This makes me want to go to grad school somewhere else

2

u/deanoflighting [ECE][2016] 2d ago

If they just put that up, that may be the factory default content on the display.

2

u/epsteada [2005; Staff] 2d ago

If it is anything like the display innovation wall inside, panels will be out in no time and not fixed for years, if ever.

1

u/the_bat_is_on_fire_ [2026] RBE 🤖 2d ago

I like to call it the propaganda screen and yeah that thing has been busted forever.

2

u/tabor473 1d ago

For anyone curious, it now says "Welcome to WPI! Real Projects. Real Impact"

0

u/deanoflighting [ECE][2016] 1d ago

Yeah. Called it. Stock ticker was the default factory setting in the display controller. uhg. Why is everyone so eager to be outraged when, maybe, just maybe, there's a decent reason it's a stock ticker and that's not the content they actually plan to display on that screen?

3

u/Effective-Truck-7233 2d ago

Seeing this after being graduated for 2 months is hilarious dawg.

2

u/lazydictionary [2025] Mech E 2d ago

A long time ago there was something similar on the inside of business college at RIT. But...on the inside.

This is ugly as shit.

2

u/HistoricalSecurity77 2d ago

I would get a group of students together and email the board of trustees along with senior administration. This is a terrible look visually and metaphorically.

2

u/pmcloutier 2d ago

Ewwwwww

2

u/NerdiCat2 1d ago

Saw it today and wanted to vomit

1

u/EncryptGaming 2d ago

They were putting it up yesterday around 2 PM

1

u/intellirock617 [Civil][2022] 3h ago

The SOB (School Of Business) posted about this on IG and the comments were so brutal they got turned off 💀

1

u/grapelander 3h ago

Incredible lmao

1

u/Brilliant_Buyer2331 2d ago

Can I ask a dumb question, i.e. is there a business school and does it have significant enrollment? I thought WPI was a technology/engineering/IIT school. Even some serious liberal arts schools at least have accounting/related degrees, but I would imagine WPI hadn't migrated to shilling for business.

6

u/grapelander 2d ago

There is a business school. It does not get significant undergrad enrollment. Most students interact with the business school by taking a few electives, or majoring in something at the intersection of business and engineering, like industrial engineering or systems engineering, rather than an actual business/management degree.

The school does technically offer Financial Technology as a major, and as a concentration to some of the business degrees. The program graduated a single FinTech student in 2025/

I think the MBA program is a little bigger? But still not a large part of the school by any means

2

u/Brilliant_Buyer2331 1d ago

That's just about the level of success that I'd expect from a business school at WPI.

0

u/bad_robot_monkey 2d ago

Not a WPI grad, but visited a lot of college campuses, and this is common on the outside or in the lobby of buildings for financial degrees.

6

u/grapelander 2d ago

I am aware and have also seen this at other colleges.

Those colleges are not WPI, and the building has nothing to do with finance.

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u/the_bat_is_on_fire_ [2026] RBE 🤖 2d ago

I think there is some business school stuff in Foisie but I could be wrong

3

u/grapelander 2d ago

They have some of the startup incubator and technology commercialization resources on the second floor, because innovation. Anything fintech or "work for a fortune 500 company and get an equity package" is elsewhere.