 “There will be an extremely sophisticated heating, ventilating and air conditioning system,” he explains. “There will be a great number of chemical hoods in both departments. Both buildings will be completely accessible to individuals with any form of disability.”
In addition, stresses Weiss, the buildings have been designed by the architectural firm Einhorn, Yaffee and Prescott of Boston to provide the maximum amount of flexibility, allowing for future shifts in programs and evolutions in faculty research interests, teaching priorities and technological developments.
De-Ping Yang, associate professor and chair of the physics department, underscores the imperative need for such fundamental change, noting that Band-Aid solutions can no longer bring the existing laboratories and classrooms in Haberlin up to modern standards. During a short stroll through the building, he points out the small classrooms, the efforts to add computer access to laboratories designed long before the computer age, exposed pipes, the balky dumbwaiter in a research laboratory.
He welcomes the plans for vastly improved air handling, more effective and efficient laboratory and classroom space, corner study areas for students, and faculty offices with natural light.
Moreover, notes Yang, the new space is eminently flexible, tailor-made for the way science is undertaken at Holy Cross. In the “Modern Physics” laboratory, for example, darkrooms essential for experiments in quantum mechanics will be divided using “light-tight” curtains instead of walls so that the space can be opened up for other uses. Doors connecting three adjoining rooms can be opened to create “the long view for measuring the speed of light, an essential parameter in the theory of relativity and the concept of the photon.”
The new facilities will also support the discovery-based teaching that is a key pedagogical feature in both physics and chemistry at Holy Cross.
In physics, it is primarily the sequence in “General Physics in Daily Life,” taken by many science and premed students, that depends upon this approach—integrating lab and lecture to use equipment and objects found in one’s everyday experience to help students learn the subject through their own experimentation. Physics majors also take advanced labs and research projects taught in the same explorative manner.
But it is the chemistry department that first developed the discovery approach in 1988. It was a major breakthrough in science teaching: a method that gave students the opportunity to learn first by doing.
“‘Discovery Chemistry’ is a laboratory-focused approach to learning chemistry that enables students to learn chemical concepts, methods and skills through their own experimental work,” says Van Doren. “The guided inquiry experiments place each student in the role of investigative scientist—and lectures are used to discuss and extend results. After completing the full chemistry curriculum, students are able to design, execute and analyze sophisticated experiments on their own.”
Since its inception, “Discovery Chemistry” has been widely emulated across the country. Supported by the National Science Foundation and other organizations, it was named a “Program that Works” by Project Kaleidoscope in 1994.
Van Doren emphasizes the critical impact that the new facilities will have on both teaching and research in chemistry.
“In organic chemistry,” she says, “every student will have a space with a hood to work in. Without that provision, it restricts our curriculum.”
There will be considerable investment in inculcating appropriate safety standards for different labs. And there will be considerable space for instruments, with laboratories equipped with different types of power and bench space.
“We have an amazing suite of state-of-the-art chemical instrumentation that rivals any in the nation for exclusive use of undergraduates. It enables students to have hands-on experience with instrumentation from their first day in chemistry,” Van Doren explains. “The hallmark of our program is the students’ work in laboratories using modern chemical methods and instrumentation.”
The new facilities will also go far to encourage the independent student research that is already a popular option in this department as well as others.
“There are 32 students in chemistry doing research this fall; more will join most in the spring and many will continue through the summer,” Van Doren adds. “Every faculty member is involved. Ample, safe and appropriate space for that research is critical. The new Haberlin will provide that.”
Indeed, the new science complex is intended not only to facilitate that work but to display it.
“You will see science everywhere you look in this facility,” says Weiss, describing laboratories bordered with glass walls that will add visibility and enhance safety. “It is designed from the outside looking in and vice versa to be a showcase.”
The green patina of the new building’s striking copper roof and majestic glass pavilion and vestibule will stand out, yet the polished limestone of its walls has been specifically selected to blend in with the look of the campus, where the stone is a regular feature.
Of key importance in the design is the desire to support and encourage interdisciplinary teaching and research among the six different departments involved: biology, chemistry, mathematics and computer science, physics, psychology, and sociology and anthropology. That goal will be facilitated by the new building’s location, tucked into the open space between Beaven and the Haberlin-Swords-O’Neil complex; it will be linked to Beaven by connections on the first and fourth floors and to Swords and Haberlin through a number of entrances on several levels.
Investing in Discovery, continued >>>
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