New building combines sciences

The Science and Math Learning Center, which opens its doors today, will house four departments under one roof in hopes of getting the programs to rethink the nature of science at UNM.

The $23 million, four-floor facility provides science labs and a 200-seat auditorium for the chemistry, mathematics, biology and earth and planetary sciences departments. John Geissman, earth and planetary sciences professor, said science and math disciplines are becoming more integrated and relationships between them are becoming necessary. He said the new building could facilitate that relationship.

“This will foster a greater degree of — hopefully at least from the educational perspective — it will foster greater degree of interdisciplinary interest,” he said. “In that context, (it will) significantly improve the learning environment for students taking science classes, and that’s the goal of it.”

Biology chair Richard Cripps said the labs in the building will be a significant upgrade.

“It is the first new set of labs for our biology 124 course, which is the pre-nursing type biology course, so it’s the first time that we have been able to offer that in new labs for 20 or 30 years,” he said. “The labs we were using before were pretty old and outdated, so it is a really terrific upgrade for students in terms of facilities and the kind of instruction that we can do.”

Deborah Sulsky, associate chair of the mathematics and statistics department, said classes are scheduled to start today in the building, but furniture in the public areas will not be fully installed until next month.

The departments helped in designing effective learning environments in the building, particularly the labs, Geissman said.

Cripps said the learning center will enhance the relationship between the four departments.

“Unfortunately, since we all have our own individual buildings, we don’t always interact across the college, because all of this is college of arts and sciences, of course,” he said. “It might help increase interactions between the different departments, and I think that will be a really great thing.”