University dedicates Gottwald Center for the Sciences
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Gottwald Center for the Sciences was dedicated March 2. Guests enjoyed tours of the building, speeches and scientific experiments.
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"Research is important. It matters," said Thomas R. Tritton, renowned cancer chemotherapy scientist and president of Haverford College, at the dedication March 2 of the $37 million expansion and renovation of Gottwald Center for the Sciences. "At its core, research is about problem solving, and people will be called upon to solve problems" no matter what profession they choose.
Prior to the dedication ceremony, Richmond biology professors April Hill and Malcolm Hill presented a lecture on their ground-breaking research regarding marine sponges and the sophisticated genes they carry. The Hills' research has yielded valuable insight about the earliest stages of genetic evolution in animals.
Otis D. Coston Jr., rector of the Board of Trustees, then welcomed the more than 200 guests attending the dedication and said the new center resulted "from the vision and generosity of many of you here today."
During the ceremony, President William E. Cooper called the building a "symbol of success of the Transforming Bright Minds campaign." He thanked the Gottwald family for its continued support of the sciences at Richmond and noted the "skills, talent and dedication" of all who worked on the project.
Biology and chemistry student Sean Foster, '06, described the Gottwald Center as "an exciting place, instead of an intimidating place, as science buildings can sometimes be."
Also speaking at the dedication were Martha Carpenter, W'51, who said her Richmond education enabled her to pursue her dream of being a doctor, and Val Kish, who described the "discovery-based learning" that goes on in the building and said that even though students were divided into separate disciplines for administrative purposes, "in the real world of science, departmental boundaries disappear."
Following the dedication program, guests were invited to take tours of the building and view research demonstrations in a number of laboratories.
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 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.
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President Bill Cooper with Floyd Gottwald following the dedication ceremony.
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Members of the Gottwald family gather prior to the dedication ceremony.
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A guest takes a look at an experiment in one of the center's 50 research laboratories.
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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.
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