{"id":3972,"date":"2011-10-17T07:58:39","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T07:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/sites\/gsm\/?p=30"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:55:12","slug":"building-in-the-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2011\/10\/17\/building-in-the-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Building in The Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"biologyBuilding\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Construction Underway on New Biological Sciences Building<\/h3>\n

The number of biology majors at Georgia Southern isn\u2019t the only growing thing that attracted the concern of planners for a new biological sciences building.<\/p>\n

The 155,000-plus square-foot facility has been informally dubbed \u201cThe Building in the Trees\u201d with good reason, given its footprint that rests in a heavily wooded area near the intersection of Forest Drive and Akins Boulevard. The contractor is clearing a minimal number of trees and upon completion students will be taking a walk in the woods before they walk through the doors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to have a different look, embedded in that site, than that of some of the other buildings on campus,\u201d said Stephen Vives, Department of Biology chair. \u201cIt will be a nice transition from Forest Drive and Akins Boulevard through that site to the RAC. We anticipate a lot of students will walk through and be exposed to this building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biology is attracting increasing numbers of students \u2013 between 15 and 20 percent growth per year, said Vives \u2013 making the move to a new building a welcome one for faculty and students in terms of additional space and enhanced function.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe labs will be modern, with all the current safety considerations,\u201d Vives said, enabling faculty and students to conduct some studies they could not do before. The amount of laboratory square footage per student in the 1970s-era building, is below today\u2019s standard, he said. \u201cThe new building will allow students to work together in groups and for faculty to be more mobile in the labs so that they can check on what the students are doing, answer questions, and challenge the students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the new lecture rooms are patterned after those at MIT, said Vives, which are based on TEAL \u2013 Technology Enhanced Active Learning \u2013 providing a combination of lecture and lab work that can occur in the same room. \u201cIn these areas, students are assigned projects to work through, and the way the room is designed, you have a group at a table with a laptop computer. They are able to display their results separately from all of the other groups around the room so that then the groups can come back together and compare results.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of data that suggests that group learning and active learning in this studio-style classroom is a best practice,\u201d Vives said. \u201cWe will still have some standard lecture rooms for those classes where that works best, but we\u2019ll have a lot more flexibility in how we teach.\u201d Members of the design team attended new science building workshops sponsored by Project Kaleidescope (PKAL) funded by the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n

Faculty research labs will be shared spaces, encouraging collaboration, said Vives. \u201cThe typical arrangement will be two faculty per lab space plus their students. That will facilitate people working together and it allows students to see the collaborative process.\u201d The building will have supporting research areas, too: museum and specimen collections, a microscopy suite, animal care space, an aquarium room, and an insectary where insects can be raised and studied.
\n\"biologyAerial\"<\/a>
\nOther research-related rooms will feature environmentally controlled conditions, allowing researchers to maintain desired temperatures, humidity and light levels. The Biology department currently brings in significant external funding from federal and state programs. \u201cWith the increased research potential, we are hoping to attract additional external funding and new research partners to the Department,\u201d Vives said. This will lead to an increase in regional economic development.<\/p>\n

Vives said that simply approaching the building can provide some lessons. \u201cStudents should be able to learn from the outside of the building as well as the inside, especially our construction management students. People will be able to see creative ways to deal with storm water runoff from the building, including bioswales where water will be cleaned before it moves on, and rain chains directing water off the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe building is going to be much more transparent,\u201d said Vives. \u201cThere will be windows in the classrooms and in research labs so that students \u2013 and the public for that matter \u2013 can see science going on as they walk through. That\u2019s also identified as a best practice in teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).\u201d<\/p>\n

Vives said the goal is to make the building a LEED Silver-certified building and to use that certification as a teaching opportunity as well. \u201cThose green aspects of the building are going to be advertised in the building,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have some displays of power usage and water usage in real time so that other classes as well as ours can come in and actually use our building as a learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department\u2019s faculty are ecstatic about the prospect of gaining the additional space and functionality, said Vives. \u201cWe\u2019re excited and we\u2019re pleased we were chosen, but it\u2019s a responsibility we take very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Biological Sciences Building QUICKFACTS:<\/b>
\nCOST: $41.4 MILLION
\nTOTAL GROSS SQUARE FEET: 155,394
\nTEACHING LABS: 10
\nRESEARCH LABS: 15 WITH 31 RESEARCH SPACES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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