Barnard hopes to grow its biological sciences department in a new habitat in Altschul.
Three years after receiving an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Barnard is now seeking donors to embark on a complete renovation of Altschul’s ninth floor, which houses the biological sciences department. The 2005 pledge promised that for every $3 Barnard raises independently, the Mellon Foundation will match it with $1 over a six-year period, ending in 2013. The grant has already been used to renovate labs in 804 and 809 Altschul and offices for two chemistry-department professors.
“This Mellon grant is something aimed at a number of different departments,” Brian Morton, chair of the biological sciences department and professor of molecular evolution, said. “We’re now looking to get matching funds for the biology department. We would like to do large-scale renovations.”
The new space on the ninth floor will consist of three modern labs to replace the current Introductory Biology Lab, restructured preparation areas for those labs, and a new Introductory Biology Lab office close to the elevators. The new floor will also include a new “smart” classroom to replace room 903.
“The structure, the layout of the benches, reflect how science was taught 40 years ago,” Paul Hertz, professor of vertebrate physiological ecology, said. “Science pedagogy today is much more interactive and much more experiment-driven so we need to reconfigure the labs to match the way we’re teaching today.”
According to Hertz, the anticipated budget for the ninth-floor renovation will be approximately $2 million to $2.5 million. Barnard will have to come up with three-fourths of that money, and the Mellon Foundation will provide the remaining one-fourth—which Morton said will determine when and how long the project takes.
Hertz said the project will take at least eight months, and would require some professors to relocate their courses during construction.
“We would want to do as much as we can over the summer,” Morton explained. “We’d have to try to find alternative lab space… using labs that are generally used for upper-level lab courses.” He added that these upper-level lab courses would then have to be moved to a different semester to accommodate courses that are relocated.
Hertz said the project is necessary, not because of a lack of space but how space is used.
“Biology has enough space but it’s the way it’s configured—it’s a lot of waste of space,” Hertz said. “It’s the quality in the configuration of the space that’s the problem … there’s two really long benches for the students; it makes it harder for them to talk. Our plan is to replace those two long lab benches with four work stations.”
Students cited similar concerns. Deena Elkafrawi, BC ’12, agreed that the labs need to be modernized.
“It’s not a professional lab and you don’t follow basic lab protocol,” she said. “The way the lab is run is inefficient because the professor doesn’t have enough resources to make it a professional lab.”
Sakina Paracha, BC ’12, highlighted concerns about personal space in the department.
“I wish we had our own space to put our stuff in,” she said. “We have to rotate and share… you don’t get to personalize.”
Ultimately, Hertz said that how the grant money is used will depend on what members of the biological sciences department feel needs to be changed.
“We in the sciences have a vision of what we want to accomplish. It’s a matter of taking pieces of that and matching it to donors.”
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