Hope is a distinguished liberal arts college known for excellence in science, math, education, and technology. Despite its small size—3,000 students and 225 faculty—the College is a national leader in undergraduate research. It recently ranked fourth out of the top seven national undergraduate research programs in a listing by U.S. News and World Report alongside more nationally recognized names such as MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Michigan.

In addition, Hope is one of a small, select number of liberal arts colleges throughout the nation that receives $1 million annually from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants to run programs directed towards both basic scientific research and education.

"Our commitment to integrating research and education has played a fundamental role in the design of our new building," says Jim Gentile, dean of Natural Sciences for Hope. "We are working to create a research-rich environment that is steeped in investigation, where students and faculty can work as partners in research and education."

The new center is designed to underscore Hope's research-based philosophy of education with the following goals:

• Provide remodeled and new teaching labs.
• Provide technologically enhanced classrooms for the entire campus community.
• Provide an enriched infrastructure to support critical instrumentation needs.
• Insure a healthy and pleasant environment for the study of science.

"We approached the design process for the new Center as a four-way partnership between the College, Ballinger, our architectural design firm, Granger, our contractor, and the Holland community," says Gentile. "Community leaders were involved in the project from the onset since Hope is located right next to the city's historical district and we wanted our architectural style to reflect the city's strong Dutch heritage."

Working closely with the city was beneficial in resolving questions related to street closings and noise issues. The partnership also helped the College develop a program entitled "Science-in-Sight."

"Just as the name implies, the purpose of our Science-in-Sight program is to ensure that science is visible and approachable at all times to students and teachers who are touring our building," says Gentile. "Throughout the building we are setting up educational display cases with models, touch screens, and other interactive tools to help students appreciate and understand the various fields of science at work within the Peale Science Center."

The Science-in-Sight program is aimed primarily at students at the middle school and high school levels and is designed to work in tandem with Hope's ongoing work with local teachers to enhance science curriculum development. The program will also compliment the exhibits included in the building's Children's Museum on the main level, which will be open daily to the general public.

Flexible Interdisciplinary Space

"Since it is virtually impossible to predict the future of science, we wanted our new building to easily adapt to change," says Gentile. "With this in mind, our layout will be comprised of completely flexible inter-disciplinary space, with no departmental boundaries."

Instead of the traditional "layer cake" of departments, the Peale Science Center will be grouped according to similarity of studies and common instrumentation. The top floor will house studies that are molecular in nature such as organic chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics. The middle floor will have an ecological theme with studies such as population biology, geology, and environmental science, and the lower floor will focus on human and outreach studies such as nursing, psychology, and anatomy. The building will also include a large array of interdisciplinary classroom space for use by the campus community.

"This layout serves several purposes. It saves costs since it reduces unnecessary duplication of equipment when different departments are able to share," says Gentile. "It also helps facilitate learning through connections to other fields, which is one of our primary educational goals."

The new atrium is another design element intended to encourage interaction among faculty members and students. The atrium, which is being built between the two science buildings, is planned as an interaction center since it will include a gourmet coffee shop that will be available only at defined times of the day.

"Using the atrium as a programmed meeting place is an attempt to draw faculty out of their respective 'caves' and bring them to an area where they can exchange ideas and discuss projects," says Gentile. "This is especially important given the large size of the new complex and our move away from departmental groupings."

Changing Layouts and Mindsets

"Our decision to deviate from a traditional department-based configuration threw a curveball at our administrative and technical support staff that were used to being right next to the department that they serve," says Gentile.

With the new layout support staff will serve the people working near them regardless of what department it is and will continue to take care of administrative work for their traditional departments regardless of office proximity.

"Getting buy-in for the configuration changes from the support staff took a little convincing," says Gentile. "But once the staff realized the benefits of centralized support offices, the whole mind-set changed. It created an excitement similar to the energy that comes with taking on new jobs and responsibilities."

Each floor will have a centralized support office, with labs and faculty offices distributed around the perimeter of the building. All three floors will have a support office capable of housing two administrative assistants, with an overall total of 60 teaching and research labs, 19 classrooms of various sizes, and 70 faculty offices. The second floor will also house a science divisional office with room for the dean, his executive assistant, and two support staff.

The facility plan includes two types of lab and office layouts. The first option is a 600-sf module, with a 120-sf office and a 480-sf lab integrated into the same space. With this module the office is accessible from the corridor and students enter the lab through a separate door. The second layout is a 750-sf module, with those offices being 150 sf with a larger 600-sf lab directly across from the office, giving each office the advantage of exterior windows.

"Based on teaching styles and subject matters many faculty members prefer to have their office directly linked to their lab," says Gentile. "Even though the integrated lab/office layout does not offer windows in the office, the space still benefits from a large amount of borrowed light from the lab’s exterior windows."

Lab equipment will be grouped into instrumentation pods so that various disciplines located on the same floor can share access to the equipment. The third floor, which focuses on molecular studies, has five instrumentation pods with equipment such as a 400 Mhz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrophotometer, a DNA sequencer, a series of high-pressure liquid chromographs, and high-powered confocal microscopes.

The middle floor, devoted to ecological studies, will have four instrumentation pods, including two high quality laser facilities, mass spectrophotometers, equipment used in analytical chemistry, and a wet room used to store field equipment such as nets and filtration devices used to sample water quality.

The first floor will include an anatomy lab used to store and study human cadavers and the Nursing Suite, which is designed to simulate a real hospital room with equipment used on a clinical level such as basic microscopes and various clinical centrifuges.

In all cases, the labs are large enough to accommodate the required specialized equipment required for experiments. The large size also allows for multiple conversations and experiments to take place simultaneously, thereby maximizing the flexibility of the space.

The new nursing skills lab is an example of this built-in flexibility. The lab will include eight beds to practice with "patients" that simulate real-life situations, and a library specifically devoted to nursing with multimedia equipment so that students can learn from video and computer simulations. Another example is are the twin organic chemistry labs, which each contain 10 individual fume hoods for self-directed experiments as well as a central area where teams can collaborate.

Benches in all of the labs will have epoxy countertops with beveled edges to help prevent spills. Each bench is built to accommodate up to four students and faculty.

Since the Peale Science Center is a combination of new space and existing space the utility hook-up requirements varied for each lab depending on the lab's area of study and its location within the facility. Some labs required raised floors, while others ran the utilities to the benches through columns and overhead.

All labs are plumbed for vacuum and gas lines and contain safety hoods, sinks, and other equipment that needs to be connected to the building mechanical and/or electrical systems, including deionized water, inert gas distribution lines, and specialized electrical voltage access.

The central core of the building is devoted to classroom space, with the majority of the classrooms located on the first floor including two tiered, theater-style arrangements with seating capacity of 88 and 120, respectively. Floors two and three each contain two flat-floored classrooms with no fixed seating to encourage flexibility of layout for small group projects and/or larger presentations.

Data hookups and associated wiring are available throughout the entire Science Center, including all classrooms, lab benches, and offices. Additional requirements have been added to the center's third floor Computational Science space, which will house several LINUX computer clusters for use by all of the disciplines for molecular modeling and quantitative analysis, including emerging programs in computational chemistry and bio-informatics. This space will also be used as the Center's hub for electronic visualization, a teaching method that incorporates advanced computer animation, interactive graphics, video, and virtual reality display devices.

"With our commitment to technology, we are raising the bar in terms of our students' expectations," says Gentile. "They will expect that if a small liberal arts college like Hope can employ such advanced technology at the undergrad level, then the same technology should be available and accessible on the campuses they attend for graduate work."

For Hope, this philosophy has helped them to attract the very best students and faculty to the institution. For other colleges and universities, it is an interesting way to push the future of science education and research.

By Amy Cammell

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