Planning Begins For New Teaching Facility
Reflecting its commitment to provide a laboratory-intensive biological sciences curriculum, UC Davis recently submitted plans to the Office of the President for the construction of a state-of-the-art, 34-laboratory teaching facility.
Photo: Jeannie Collopy-Bach (left), a principal program and budget analyst for the campus, and Tom Rost (right), associate dean of the division and chair of the teaching laboratory building committee, review site plans proposed for the new teaching laboratory building. A site near the new Life Sciences Addition is anticipated.
Over a 12-week period this spring, faculty in the Division of Biological Sciences and the Department of Chemistry assessed the design needs to take laboratory instruction in the life sciences into the 21st century. “We’ve seen what a state-of-the-art facility can do for faculty research,” says Tom Rost, associate dean of the division and chair of the planning committee for the new building. Referring to the Life Sciences Addition, which opened in February, 1997, he adds, “We have an obligation to offer our students a comparable educational environment.”
Also on the minds of the faculty and deans is the anticipated increase in enrollment for the already burgeoning biological sciences programs. “As we increase our student population, we are also increasing the number of faculty in every section,” says Rost. The Division of Biological Sciences has a projected enrollment of 3,600 undergraduate majors for the 1998 fall quarter, and plans to grow to more than 4,000 students by 2005, two years after the building is scheduled to open.
Courses now taught in laboratories throughout Briggs, Storer, Hutchison, and Robbins Halls will move to the new facility, making way for new programs in renovated laboratories. “Our goal is to co-locate biological sciences research and teaching programs in a cluster of buildings around a central courtyard,” says Mark G. McNamee, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences. “Essentially the plan is to have a biological sciences district on the UC Davis campus.”
In addition to teaching laboratories for biology and chemistry, the new facility plans include academic support programs, the plant biology teaching greenhouse, the Biotechnology Program, and a 500-seat lecture hall.
Under consideration are plans for a small museum-style annex that would house the Botanical Conservatory and the Herbarium. This annex would provide an opportunity to blend outdoor collections into the landscaping along the pathways between the two buildings. Their own designated facility would make the Botanical Conservatory and Herbarium, both of which are used extensively for outreach programs, more accessible to the public.
UC Davis Biological Sciences Newsletter - Summer 1998