Gottwald Center for the Sciences to be Dedicated
February 28, 2006
The University of Richmond will dedicate the $37 million expansion and renovation of the Gottwald Center for the Sciences March 2 with lectures, tours and laboratory demonstrations for invited guests.
The dedication ceremony will take place at the center at 5 p.m. It will feature a lecture by Thomas R. Tritton, renowned cancer chemotherapy scientist and Haverford College president.
University of Richmond biology professors April Hill and Malcolm Hill will lecture on sponges at 3 p.m., followed by tours of the center from 4-5 p.m. and a reception, open house and laboratory demonstrations from 6-7:30 p.m.
The center provides more than 28,000 square feet of new space and 162,000 square feet of renovated space for the building, which originally opened in 1978. The updated entrance plaza creates a new façade for the building that complements the architecture throughout campus.
The building houses the biology, chemistry and physics departments. The space includes lab facilities for organic chemistry, biochemistry and neuroscience; a quantitative science center; a nuclear magnetic resonance center; and a digital biological imaging center. In all, the center features 22 teaching laboratories and 50 student-faculty research laboratories, all of which are state of the art.
The new atrium and reading room provide both faculty and students with areas to study and interact, extending classroom learning throughout the building. The workbenches where science students sit no longer face forward in rows. Instead, they are grouped into islands that promote more group work and less lecturing. On every floor are areas where faculty and students can meet.
It is the first building on campus to support Gigabit Ethernet to every desktop. In addition to being completely wireless, there are more than 1,400 active data ports in the building.
New equipment includes a liquid chromatograph mass spectrometer, a high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, a scanning electron microscope, a confocal microscope and an atomic force microscope.
The project was designed by Einhorn, Yaffee and Prescott, headquartered in Albany, N.Y., and built by Conquest, Moncure & Dunn Inc. of Richmond.