Laboratory building
to feature state-of-the-art
greenhouse complex
With some well-chosen words
from N.C. State University officials
and the pouring of about 200 pounds of concrete, the foundation was
set for the Undergraduate Science Laboratory building at N.C. State
in May.
When its 100,000 square
feet are complete, the facility will provide state-of-the-art learning
space for more than 5,000 chemistry and physics students and hundreds
of students studying in greenhouses. Many introductory science courses
and labs will be housed there, a fact that prompted N.C. State Chancellor
Marye Anne Fox to call the building “a gateway through which our
students will enter an era of scientific discovery.”
Plans for the new facility
include 25,000 square feet of new greenhouse space, seven undergraduate
physics teaching labs, a physics tutorial center, 14 undergraduate chemistry
labs, seven classrooms, 10 faculty offices, lab prep and instrument
rooms and other space for study and faculty/student interaction.
The lowest level of the
building will be the Horticultural
Sciences head house — space that supports teaching greenhouses
and includes a horticultural wet lab, a plant pathology lab and work
space to support the three teaching greenhouses on the south side of
the building.
“Students in several
of our disciplines require greenhouse-based courses,” said Dean
James L. Oblinger of the College
of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “This new complex will provide
facilities for use by students in horticultural science, entomology,
plant pathology, crop science and soil science. These students will
now have the opportunity to study and work in modern, automated facilities
that are similar to those they will encounter should they enter a career
in our commercial greenhouse and nursery industries.”
The new greenhouses replace
the older ones previously located at the Yarbrough Drive and Brooks
Avenue site of the new building. Those greenhouses have been moved to
the university’s Horticulture Field Laboratory on Method Road.
The new Undergraduate Science
Laboratory building is scheduled to open in 2003.
—Terri
Leith
