Eastern Eastern - Fall/Winter 07 : Page 6

e Ku s c i e n c e B u i l d i n g ARCHITECT‘S RENDERING at EKU and reshape the feel of the campus for decades to come, says Dr. Malcolm Frisbie, biology professor and faculty coordinator of the building project. The Science Building will house science programs now spread over S eight buildings. At its location next to the Health Sciences buildings, down the hill from the library and across from Case Annex, home of many liberal arts programs, it will also anchor the present academic heart of the campus. Site preparation began in early July. In keeping with its commitment to protect the environment, the EKU science community along with Omni Architects, lead designers of the facility, also have committed to making this a model “green” building. This means that measures have been incorporated into the building design to promote efficient use of materials, water and energy, as well as reducing waste. Even the building construction is being undertaken with conservation in mind. Careful site planning has allowed the preservation of many stately trees that line the property off Kit Carson Drive. Refuse concrete will be pulverized and used as site preparation material, and contractors will utilize shingles reclaimed from other projects as building material for the new facility. State-of-the-art technology, an atmosphere designed to make students want to linger, and amenities like a three-story atrium and a functional stream bed which flows alongside the building are showcase features of the building’s design. 6 Eastern ite preparation and giving opportunities have begun for a 330,000 square foot Science Building that will help Eastern Kentucky University provide a nationally distinguished science preparation for each of its students. The stately new building will revolutionize science instruction A host of safety and space benefits will include: • Fine-tuned temperature control and ventilation • Plenty of safety pieces such as fume hoods for working with volatile chemicals • Classrooms designed for multiple activities like collaboration, use of both computer and mechanical equipment, and use of chemicals • The effects, when complete, will be increased safety and capability for the students and faculty working in the building and heightened interest and curiosity in the sciences among all university constituents “This building really opens the door for us to embrace modern teaching technology. It gives us so much space for group work, space for involving graduates and undergraduates in research projects. I think it’s going to electrify people,” Frisbie says. Joseph Foster, interim vice president for advancement, says that a combination of funding from the state and support from friends of EKU can both finish and outfit the building to the highest standards and provide scholarship support for deserving students. EKU will ask the Kentucky Legislature during its next session to provide $37 million to fund Phase II of the $96 million building, which will house the department of biological sciences. Phase I, already funded by the Commonwealth at $59 million, will house the departments of chemistry, geography & geology and physics & astronomy. Both phases already have been incorporated into a preliminary design drawn up with funding from the Kentucky Legislature.

EKU Science Building

A host of safety and space benefits will include: • Fine-tuned temperature control and ventilation • Plenty of safety pieces such as fume hoods for working with volatile chemicals • Classrooms designed for multiple activities like collaboration, use of both computer and mechanical equipment, and use of chemicals • The effects, when complete, will be increased safety and capability for the students and faculty working in the building and heightened interest and curiosity in the sciences among all university constituents A host of safety and space benefits will include: • Fine-tuned temperature control and ventilation • Plenty of safety pieces such as fume hoods for working with volatile chemicals • Classrooms designed for multiple activities like collaboration, use of both computer and mechanical equipment, and use of chemicals • The effects, when complete, will be increased safety and capability for the students and faculty working in the building and heightened interest and curiosity in the sciences among all university constituents Site preparation and giving opportunities have begun for a 330,000 square foot Science Building that will help Eastern Kentucky University provide a nationally distinguished science preparation for each of its students. The stately new building will revolutionize science instruction at EKU and reshape the feel of the campus for decades to come, says Dr. Malcolm Frisbie, biology professor and faculty coordinator of the building project. The Science Building will house science programs now spread over eight buildings. At its location next to the Health Sciences buildings, down the hill from the library and across from Case Annex, home of many liberal arts programs, it will also anchor the present academic heart of the campus. Site preparation began in early July. In keeping with its commitment to protect the environment, the EKU science community along with Omni Architects, lead designers of the facility, also have committed to making this a model green” building. This means that measures have been incorporated into the building design to promote efficient use of materials, water and energy, as well as reducing waste. Even the building construction is being undertaken with conservation in mind. Careful site planning has allowed the preservation of many stately trees that line the property off Kit Carson Drive. Refuse concrete will be pulverized and used as site preparation material, and contractors will utilize shingles reclaimed from other projects as building material for the new facility. State-of-the-art technology, an atmosphere designed to make students want to linger, and amenities like a three-story atrium and a functional stream bed which flows alongside the building are showcase features of the building’s design. “This building really opens the door for us to embrace modern teaching technology. It gives us so much space for group work, space for involving graduates and undergraduates in research projects. I think it’s going to electrify people,” Frisbie says. Joseph Foster, interim vice president for advancement, says that a combination of funding from the state and support from friends of EKU can both finish and outfit the building to the highest standards and provide scholarship support for deserving students. EKU will ask the Kentucky Legislature during its next session to provide $37 million to fund Phase II of the $96 million building, which will house the department of biological sciences. Phase I, already funded by the Commonwealth at $59 million, will house the departments of chemistry, geography & geology and physics & astronomy. Both phases already have been incorporated into a preliminary design drawn up with funding from the Kentucky Legislature. Frisbie says the cost of outfitting the building is now estimated at about $9 million. Of that, more than $5 million will buy scientific equipment. Major purchases will include an NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) instrument, which will be used predominantly by chemistry students; an SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), which chemistry, biological sciences, and geography & geology will use; a sophisticated laser for physics research; and a GIS (Graphical Information Systems) production suite, which will be part of geography & geology study. Biological sciences and geography & geology also need vehicles for students and faculty to use in the field for hands-on activities and research projects. “On the smaller item end of the scale, we will purchase an enormous number of microscopes for this building.When you stop and think that every student who graduates from here with a four-year degree needs to take a biology class with a lab, that means that each of those students must peer through a microscope – we need to outfit lots of laboratory teaching spaces with 24 microscopes each.They add up quickly!” Frisbee says. He says most of the remainder of the outfitting budget will be used to buy furniture, information technology and audiovisual equipment. The first phase of the building is slated to be ready for classes by spring semester of 2011. If the Legislature is forthcoming with the requested funding, the second phase should be ready for classes by fall semester of 2011, Frisbie says. Private donors will have the opportunity to help equip and furnish the vast building with their contributions. Dreams and excitement over the Science Building extend to every student on campus, not just the science majors who will take classes there.The creation of a broad-based hub to teach future English teachers and lawyers, not just future doctors, chemists and geologists, is part of the school’s mission. One ready source of non-science majors is EKU’s requirement that every student seeking a baccalaureate degree take two laboratory sciences.That will bring each of EKU’s approximately 16,000 students across the Science Building’s portals for at least two classes. “Our world is increasingly driven by technology, and increasingly there are scientific issues we all face.All people need a good foundation in basic scientific principles. They need to know the kinds of answers science can give us and the kinds science can’t,” Frisbie says. The Science Building is key to helping EKU take its place in the national science arena. “By far our biggest strength is the interest and dedication of the faculty in working with students. EKU is known as a teaching institution.You almost always have a professor teaching your class here,” Frisbie says. “Professors spend a lot of time with students in the field and getting students involved in research projects that would happen in the laboratory or in the field. The building gives us the space and new equipment to do more of that.” Careful attention to the many activities that take place in teaching spaces will result in premier classroom design in the Science Building. “Science spaces are very demanding to design because there are so many different kinds of activities that need to go on in each space. For example, in a teaching setting, one needs horizontal spaces to spread out maps, take notes and do drawings,” Frisbie says. Other activities that classrooms must accommodate include hands-on work with mechanical instruments, lasers and chemicals; work with computers for data collection and data analysis; meetings between students and faculty with boards and places to hang tear-off sheets; and hooking digital projectors to computers. “That’s a lot to put into a teaching space. But it’s a whole different ballgame if we can design the spaces, from the outset, to incorporate modern technology and provide spaces for the kinds of interactions that need to be part of top notch science instruction today,” Frisbie says. A second priority of the building is creation of an inviting atmosphere that draws people to stay and collaborate with one another. “If we educate people in the sciences – our majors plus all those people who are taking one or two courses here – we want them to be excited about where they are. One of the things we said right off the top was,‘We want people to want to be in the building and not leave as soon as possible.’We want to keep them here,” Frisbie says. Plenty of glass, natural light, and a three-story atrium located at the grand entrance of the L-shaped building will help accomplish that. Designers envision the atrium as a living space that will house a 200-seat café usable also for lectures, concerts and special events.The light and space also are seen as influences that will lead people to community and collaboration, which are key to scientific endeavor. The building is designed to spill outward to create teaching areas outdoors also. A greenhouse, plant beds, an aquatic pond, and wetland that will run alongside the building are among these. One of the most fascinating features is the dry bed stream, which will receive massive amounts of water that collects on the roof and is guttered down. “Physicists could look at the flow rates and the depth vs. the velocity of the water. Geologists could study how sediment moves. Biologists could study the life that grows there.We are going to direct that water to a place where we can use it to demonstrate concepts in geology, physics, ecology and chemistry,” Frisbie says. “What a great place to take water samples and do chemical analyses on them.” Other outdoor features will include rocks for geologists, an observation point where a telescope can be mounted for astronomical observations and a forest that biologists can observe growing over time. A third influence of the building will be its physical presence. Easily the largest structure on campus, when complete, the building will be striking and memorable in appearance. Its location just north of the health sciences complex is near the heart of the campus both literally and figuratively. In a way, the building will serve to link the traditional liberal arts housed in one set of buildings—English, foreign languages and humanities, philosophy and religion, mathematics and statistics— with the applied disciplines located in the health sciences buildings and the computer science building. “I think this building will be a space that you feel comfortable in and want to linger in. I think the space will allow us to teach and do science in exciting new ways,” Frisbie says. Anyone interested in learning more about the Science Building and the many ways to support Eastern’s students is encouraged to contact the EKU Development Office at 859/622-1583.

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