Nick Lee ’17 is not a science student. The applied economics major and management studies minor won the Bear Pitch marketing competition twice, most recently with a transportation app idea. As one of the first summer Business Assist students, he helped S&B Catering in Lansdale with social media and marketing.
He is not studying Rydberg atoms. But he is excited about the planned Innovation and Discovery Center (IDC), which will house the U-Imagine Center for Integrative and Entrepreneurial Studies, whose programs he has been involved in since his sophomore year.
The three-story IDC will usher in a new era for interdisciplinary learning and research at Ursinus College, physically connecting Pfahler and Thomas Halls. It will make Ursinus the only college in the Centennial Conference to combine policy, entrepreneurship and science under one roof, with the Parlee Center for Science and the Common Good and the U-Imagine Center for Integrative and Entrepreneurial Studies sharing space with the Biology, Neuroscience, Health and Exercise Physiology, and Environmental Studies programs.
“The programs that will be housed there, those are all part of what makes Ursinus such a unique and vibrant place.”
It will also provide 30-seat and 50-seat technology-enhanced active learning classrooms; flexible laboratories that can be adapted to a particular research project; open meeting and work spaces that bring together students and faculty from every discipline, and a “maker space” and creativity center that will allow students to work in teams on entrepreneurial and creative projects.
Physics major Veronica Sanford ’17 does study Rydberg atoms (an atom in a highly excited state), as well as astronomy and space science. She was one of two students who spent time in Los Alamos, N.M., working under alumnus Patrick Gasda ’07, analyzing data from the “ChemCam,” which is aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover exploring Mars.
The double minor in Spanish and chemistry could be a dictionary example of “interdisciplinary.”
“I have a variety of classes ranging from quantum mechanics to organic chemistry to Hispanic world and Spanish literature,” she says. She takes art classes, dance classes in jazz, ballet and more, including a sociology class that she credits with teaching her about the racial inequalities in America, and an anthropology class on the Native American groups in South America. She sang in the Messiah holiday concert.
Sanford would love to explore the integration of a science curriculum into poorer Spanish speaking countries. “In the United States, we are very fortunate with the education we receive. In less fortunate countries, however, science is not a priority.”
In a place like the IDC, Sanford may get to explore this idea. The possibilities are endless.
Today, explains Beth Bailey, associate professor and chair of the biology department, “There really isn’t just biology research or psychology research. Everything blends together. Science isn’t done in a vacuum anymore. It’s collaborative.”
Academic Neighborhoods
To adapt to the evolution of teaching science, tomorrow’s students will have multiple homes, or academic neighborhoods, centered in the IDC, the centerpiece of the Keep the Promise campaign. The $29 million IDC will add 42,500 square feet of new space, but more important is its reinforcement of cross-disciplinary thinking, and encouraging students to go in and out of different “neighborhoods” because they don’t just learn in one subject area.
“The IDC encourages students to think on a broader scale, answer critical questions, and train for jobs that haven’t been created yet.”
Faculty who helped conceive the IDC spent a lot of time thinking about how a building would fit how the faculty wanted to teach, says Bailey. “We spent a lot of time thinking about the science of the future. What will the scientists be doing and how can we make our new building reflect that?”
They thought about students like Lee, Sanford and Marcus Wagner ’17, who will combine science disciplines as he seeks to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical studies with a focus in cardiovascular physiology.
He said he would like to see how all three centers (U-Imagine, Center for Science and the Common Good, and the Melrose Center for Global Civic Engagement—not housed in the IDC) can work as a “cohesive unit to provide more opportunities to students, as well as the faculty that help make up these centers.”
Wagner, a swimmer and admission tour guide, is researching the effects of pregnancy on the heart, in Bailey’s lab. “I wish I was an incoming prospective student now,” he says, “so I would have had the opportunity to have access to a facility like the Innovation and Discovery Center.”
And they had in mind recent graduate Aubrey Paris ’15, who majored in both chemistry and biology. She has learned that today’s scientists need to reach beyond their specific fields.
At Ursinus, Paris was a Fellow of the Center for Science and the Common Good, and a first place winner in the U-Imagine U-Innovate entrepreneurial competition.
“I’ve noticed that my fellow college graduates from across the country and beyond are, as a general rule, trained to think that pursuing science means accepting a career in either academia or industry,” she says. “However, the world in which we live has mandated that scientists be proficient and excited about disciplines that extend beyond research, including business, policy, communication and marketing, among others.”
Where We Started
Ursinus has a history of building on its past to move into the future.
“…so that the spirit and method of original research might prevail.” President Dr. George Leslie Omwake, 1928, in planning for Pfahler Hall.
In its early history, labs were shoehorned into available spaces. Chemistry and physics laboratories were on the second floor of Bomberger Hall and the biology lab was on the first floor. Eventually the chemistry lab gained a little more space by moving to the Bomberger basement. Planning for a building just for science began around 1917.
Thomas Hall was built in 1970 as a life sciences building. The class and research laboratory for genetics was state of the art, as well as for microbiology, vertebrate study, cytology, botany and psychology.
The labs have been updated and renovated, but not much else has changed. “In Thomas, where we have the old fashioned way of doing science, I have an office and a tiny little research space,” says Bailey. “This is how science used to be done. The scientist sat by himself and had a little lab where he tinkered. I also have a research lab next door where my students work.
How Did We Get Here?
The renovation of Pfahler Hall in 1997-1998 was intended to address the new collaborative methods of teaching science, and also update the labs and provide student work spaces.
“What is going on here is important to our society. We must never make the mistake of assuming that by helping Pfahler we are helping merely Ursinus College.”
President John Strassburger in 1998, marking the campaign to expand Pfahler Hall.
The upgrade was supported by alumni during a campaign known as “Science for a New Century.” Improvements to the then-65-year-old building were necessary for Ursinus to remain among the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, it was noted. And, the teaching of science had changed dramatically. “Science is very collaborative,” former Dean Judith Levy, a chemist, said in a 1997 Ursinus Magazine. “Students work cooperatively in class and in laboratories on questions and projects which demand dialogue. Computers are critical to their work. Moreover, research has become an integral part of the teaching process.”
Where We Are Going
Professor of Chemistry Victor Tortorelli, who shepherded Pfahler’s renovation 20 years ago, is excited to usher in a new era in science education and undergraduate student research. He predicts “great interactions among people.” Get ready, he says, for some “high tech problem-solving.”
The scene today is a construction site. But in two years that will all change.
Says Bailey: “We want our students to come into our labs and contribute to ideas. We want them to come in having read an article about a specific kind of research and want to try it in their own way. Absolutely, our students, when they leave here have come up with their own ideas, designed their own experiments…
“We want to see students in the hallways, writing on the boards, talking about what they’re doing, and planning their experiments. We want to see a chemistry major writing something down and starting a conversation with a neuroscience student…and generating ideas.”
