A Look into Vassar Science | Building project to renovate, add to science facilities

Erica Hersh Guest Writer

This is Part II of a three-part series on science at Vassar. Part III will explore the history of science at Vassar and reflect on future plans.

Since Spring 2004, plans have been brewing for a project that will change the face of Vassar’s campus. Though still in its planning stages, the project seeks to renovate the existing science buildings and possibly build one or more new science facilities on campus.

No one, not even the Science Facility Planning Committee, knows for sure what the extent of the changes will be. The committee is composed of students and faculty. Some existing buildings, like Sanders Physics, will remain intact, but the Committee does not yet know whether Mudd Chemistry will stay, or how the any new buildings will look. According to an update released by the Planning Committee, it is likely that labs will go in the new buildings, which will be built near Olmsted, and “drier” (i.e. non-lab) departments such as mathematics will be housed in renovated buildings such as Sanders Physics.

Right now, the architect firm Polshek Partnership is hard at work on design proposals that they will submit to the trustees for review and cost analysis. The planning committee said that the trustees will hopefully have chosen a proposal by Fall 2008, and will hire contractors who will break ground in about two years.

The proposed budget is $100 million. Vassar conducts general capital campaigns, during which it fundraises as much money as it can, for use in whatever projects are in the works. To fund the project, the College will use some capital campaign money along with donations, gifts and borrowing to make up the rest.

The College began discussing the project after recognizing a need for updated spaces and equipment for the science programs. Professor of Biology Jodi Schwartz said that “Everyone hates that building.” Psychology is crowded into Blodgett, and other departments such as computer science are banished to unused basements. The College developed a plan to give these departments the space they deserve and require. While Vassar’s science lab equipment is relatively up-to-date, the sciences evolve quickly, and Vassar needs new equipment to reflect advances and emerging fields such as genomics. Because these new areas of focus often involve ideas and scientists from many disciplines, it makes sense to move the sciences into common facilities where they can easily share equipment.

Building new science facilities will also give multidisciplinary programs the chance to have spaces that match their collaborative needs. “We’re in a position where we need to start renovating our science buildings, and it would be crazy to renovate them in their current configuration, which is no longer consistent with the way we teach science,” explained Vassar College President Catharine Bond Hill. “It makes sense to think about science facilities that match what we are doing.”

By putting multidisciplinary departments into the new facilities, their bonds with the sciences that they contain will be strengthened. Similarly, psychology, which is considered a natural science at few schools besides Vassar, will be able to strengthen its research and quantitative components.

Putting departments and professors in closer proximity to each other, “will change the nature of formal and informal interactions,” said Professor of Biology John Long. The sharing of ideas that comes from this proximity will lead to a more effective multidisciplinary science program, as well as mirror the way that science is conducted in the real world.

However, all the professors interviewed are at least of aware of the possibility that the structure of the science facilities could lead to the elimination of some departments entirely, allowing professors to join together by their conceptual fields and areas of research. Though the idea may have its merits (making research easier, for example), professors and department heads generally agree that eliminating departments wouldn’t be a practical structure for Vassar sciences. Some departments, such as chemistry, must follow national guidelines, while Professor of Chemistry, Chair of the Science Facility Planning Committee, and Associate Dean of the Faculty Marianne Begemann indicated that many of the smaller department such as computer science feel strongly about remaining cohesive units. Besides, if the current formula works, why undergo such a radical change?

The planners of the facilities seem to feel the same way. “We’ll probably ...have some...[integration of departments] occurring, but we’ll still have spaces that are identified with particular departments,” Begemann said.

Beyond whether science departments remain separate or integrate with each other, the new facilities may give the sciences a chance for greater integration into the College as a whole. “It’s not like I feel discriminated against,” said biology major Emily Berger ’10. “But a lot of times when people hear my major or what classes I’m taking, they make a face and say, ‘Oh. I’m not a science person.’” By giving students with similar interests inviting spaces to interact, the science facilities may lessen this feeling of isolation, foster more collaboration on the student level and perhaps even attract more students to science classes.

However, uprooting departments that already feel hidden from view and putting them all in one location does raise some concerns. “We, as the science faculty, were a little bit wary of being categorized as a science ghetto,” said Begemann, “but at a campus like Vassar, you need a critical mass, and the way that we’re imagining the facilities as being really open; they’re not going to feel like they’re just for the sciences. It’s actually going to be thought of as a way of bridging the sciences with the rest of the campus.”

More information on the science building project should be released before the end of the year. Look for updates in upcoming issues of The Miscellany News.