After nearly four decades without any significant up-grades, the Pearson Chemical Laboratory is slated for a renovation to begin in March and to finish before the start of the fall semester. The renovation will fix several problems in the lab, including extreme temperatures, outdated equipment and crowded conditions.
The lab will move from the third floor to the second, and will include updated equipment.
While the project was approved several years ago, it was put on hold because of cuts stemming from the current economic downturn, according to Department of Chemistry Chair Krishna Kumar.
Because there are already teaching labs on the second floor, moving the organic lab to the second floor will consolidate space by making the entire second floor a "teaching floor," Kumar said.
"[The second floor] is the heart of the teaching area," Director of Construction Management Mitch Bodnarchuk said. "The third floor is really out of the way, so having shared facilities such as the equipment room will make it much more convenient."
Hundreds of students use the lab facilities each year, Kumar added.
The second-floor area that the lab will replace currently houses labs and offices, according to Bodnarchuk. Those labs will be updated as part of the renovation, and the offices will be moved to the third floor -- switching places with the lab being updated.
A student lounge may also fill some vacated third-floor space, Bodnarchuk added.
The laboratory's equipment will undergo an update under the renovation plans. Kumar said that he expects students to appreciate the upgrades, an initiative which aims to bring the facility up to modern standards and safety codes.
"The only thing that doesn't suck in the laboratory is the hoods," Kumar joked.
"[The renovated laboratory] will include lower energy hoods and more ergonomic and state-of-the-art chemistry equipment that will provide a much nicer experience for students," he said.
Faculty and students agreed that the change is long overdue.
Chemistry Lecturer Sergiy Kryatov described his experiences teaching organic chemistry in the summer as "terrible." The heat, he said, affected many chemical experiments.
"The 80- to 90-degree temperatures made things very difficult, especially because it made some labs invalid because the reactions do not always work at such high temperatures," Kryatov said. "It is irresponsible that [the renovation] wasn't done at least 10 years ago."
Sophomore Sapan Bhatt noted that much of the equipment is outdated and that overcrowding is common.
"The equipment in the labs is often too low-grade to meet accuracy requirements of an experiment," he said. "And many times, you have twelve groups all waiting to use one machine, which makes the labs really long and inefficient ... To give the labs any meaning or validity, the equipment needs to be upgraded."
While sophomore Hillary Rosen said that she didn't experience crowded conditions, she was disappointed by the overall state of the lab the first time she walked into it.
"I expected it to be more modern, and I can see how a renovation could be appropriate," she said.
