UW-Madison opened its gleaming nine-story Chemistry Tower to students this semester after months of construction delays. The new building at 1101 University Ave. will ease enrollment bottlenecks that have plagued the department for decades.
More than 7,000 students will take at least one chemistry class this semester alone. The new tower offers modern lab and learning spaces, a dramatic upgrade from the previous spaces designed in a computer-less era with different safety standards and lab equipment.
"The new building is addressing a really serious need on the campus for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education," Professor Robert McMahon said Wednesday during a media tour.
Half of all UW-Madison freshmen take a chemistry course in their first year on campus. Nearly all students majoring in science, engineering and health fields require chemistry courses as prerequisites to courses in their major.
The chemistry department struggled with a "tremendous enrollment crunch" over the past two decades to keep up with demand, leading some students to take longer to graduate. The new building brings the department on par with its Big Ten peer schools, most of whom remodeled their facilities about 20 years ago, said McMahon, who co-chaired the building committee.
Taxpayer-supported borrowing funded $90 million of the $135 million project, he said. University funds and private donations covered the rest of the price tag.
BUILDING FEATURES
The tower's two lecture halls aren't built on such a steep slope that is common in academia. The flatter floor design encourages collaboration, making it easier for students to turn around in their seats and work together on a chemical equation.
Instructors in the multipurpose "learning studio" can lecture or present, as well as assign group work with adequate space to spread out. The room's functionality is something now-retired professor John Moore said wasn't previously available. He remembers having to schedule the two types of activities on different days and in different buildings.
The learning studio can also be opened up into the atrium for research fairs and receptions.
An "information commons" replaces the building's library. No more book check-out. Students can access chemical literature resources online or secure one of the roughly dozen enclosed study spaces, each of which has drop-down presentation screens and laptop hook-ups.
"We call it the library of the future," McMahon said.
Up a few floors are six state-of-the-art chemistry labs. Adjacent "write-up rooms" contain glass whiteboard walls. Movable desks and swivel chairs can form larger tables for groups to analyze lab data together. No similar space existed previously. Students would instead spill out in tight hallways or work at cramped, outdated lab benches with chemicals nearby.
The long-awaited completion of the new tower is a bright spot in what has been a rocky few years for the chemistry department.
Several building floors experienced severe flooding in 2019. COVID-19 hit the following year, stalling some research. In 2021, various construction problems related to the new building not only delayed opening of the new tower but closed parts of the older building wings, a shutdown that spanned nearly 90 days and cost $3.2 million in lost research progress.
The costs associated with the delayed opening of the new tower are still being determined, UW-Madison spokesperson Eric Hamilton said. The Bureau of State Risk Management and insurers for others involved in the project are evaluating the causes for the failures that resulted in the delay.
The shutdown of the building's Daniels and Mathews wings affected the graduation timelines of more than half of the department's 400 graduate students. Some of them last fall called for direct compensation to make up for the loss of delayed future earnings.
UW-Madison has offered appointment extensions though an exact number is not available because the information isn't tracked centrally, Hamilton said. But the university will not be be offering compensation to offset students' delayed career trajectories.
While the wing closures were inconvenient and unfortunate for students, researchers, faculty and staff, he said, they also placed a burden on UW-Madison, which has suffered its own harm, damage and cost, including to its reputation. The university's legal team has advised that UW-Madison could not have done anything differently to avoid this harm.
Graduate students aren't happy with the appointment extensions alone, sixth-year graduate student Marie Fiori said. But most are feeling relieved — and a bit overwhelmed — about being back in the building. Fiori said she's working extra to make up for the missed time out of the lab.
©2022 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
