Instructional Features

Although many instructional classrooms and laboratories for biology will remain in Brooks Hall, the new building will support improved instruction, especially for upper-level classes.

Instructional spaces will include:

• A 220-seat auditorium
• One 50-seat and two 30-seat classrooms
• Six 24-seat teaching laboratories
• Several informal collaboration and meeting spaces

Research Features

The building will feature an open, modern floor plan, particularly in the lab areas. Instead of having a series of individual, closed-off labs, the building will have six open-plan laboratories. Each will have open rows of laboratory benches together with a series of specialty rooms dedicated to specific equipment or functions. Six or seven faculty members, plus dedicated staff and students, will share each open laboratory space. This approach will facilitate collaboration as well as sharing of equipment.

Specialty research facilities will include:

• An equipment storage, staging and sample-processing storage area for ecological fieldwork
• Molecular biology core
• Isotope laboratory
• Imaging Center for Scanning and Transmission electron microscopes (SEM and TEM) and other microscopes and imaging equipment
• Herbarium
• Vivarium for aquatic organisms such as fish. This area will be designed with the potential to house rodents in the future without retrofitting.

On April 11, 2013 the CMU Board of Trustees approved the construction of the new Biosciences Building - the largest capital project ever for the university.