Barnard is seeking matching funds to integrate the environmental science department into one floor and increase interaction among undergraduates, graduates, and post‑doctoral students.
After receiving a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2005, Barnard aims to renovate the fourth floor of Altschul, which houses the environmental science department. The grant has already been used to renovate the eighth floor for the chemistry department and will be used to renovate the ninth floor for the biological sciences department, projects whose objectives centered more on increasing and reconfiguring space. The environmental science department, though, envisions one floor for all of its courses as well as the creation of two new office spaces: one for a new faculty member and the other for different types of students to interact.
“My Introduction to Environmental Science course has about 120 students and there are eight lab sections that run almost every morning and every afternoon,” Peter Bower, senior lecturer, said. “Right now, that lab is in 616 Altschul [while] the environmental science department is on the fourth floor.”
The fourth floor of Altschul currently holds a large classroom for courses that require the use of computers. Bower said this classroom would be replaced by the sixth‑floor lab to relocate all environmental science courses to the fourth floor, where the majority of the department is already in place.
“This will have a major impact in that all the students will be able to relate to everyone in the department and not [be] isolated on the sixth floor,” Bower continued. “Just in terms of general logistics to have everything on one floor just makes it easier to move things around.”
Martin Stute, co‑chair of the environmental science department and professor, agreed. “There are lots of students taking the class … it’s a hands‑on lab environment,” he said. “It makes it all easier to be on the fourth floor … it kind of consolidates our department.”
The existing classroom on the sixth floor, he said, will either be merged with a classroom on the fifth floor or moved to the upcoming Diana Student Center.
The project will also include the creation of two new office spaces on the fourth floor‑one for a new faculty member and the other, a lounge space for post‑doctoral scholars and graduate students.
“We are hoping to eventually hire an additional faculty member which we don’t have any office space for right now,” Stute said. “The other office we want to use sort of as a space where post‑docs and graduate students can basically hang out and interact with us and our undergraduate students.”
Stute also described the project as crucial in strengthening the relationship that already exists between Barnard’s environmental science department and Columbia.
“We are very tightly connected to Columbia,” he said, mentioning that he and another faculty member have appointments at the Lamont‑Doherty Earth Observatory, a research institution and member of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “We work with a lot of students at the graduate student level plus post‑docs as well … this will create some symmetry between those graduate students and post‑docs and our undergraduate students.”
But the timing of the project will be determined once the necessary funds are raised.
“I think this is the kind of thing that can be done in the summer,” Bower said. “The existing rooms are there that basically have to be gutted. I don’t know the number but it’s got to be a substantial sum.”
Stute echoed similar sentiments, adding that “some matching funds would have to be raised.”
While the project focuses on bringing together the environmental science department, other departments will reap benefits as well.
“That sixth floor lab, they [the chemistry department] would take it over and they need some lab space badly. This is a win‑win situation for everyone,” Stute said. “The question is whether they find the funding.”
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