A new home for STEM education
EKU Science Building - Eastern Kentucky University
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EKU’s College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics was scattered across multiple buildings on the 892-acre campus. This made it inconvenient for students and challenging for faculty to achieve a collegial, collaborative culture. The university needed a new home for its science departments that created a unified home and a revitalized, collective identity.
Our process included collaborative work sessions with different user groups to identify and prioritize needs, utilizing a "project shepherd' from EKU to facilitate the planning committee’s decision-making. Working in collaboration with HERA Lab Planners, we received quantitative and qualitative information from space analyses, departmental questionnaires, and other exercises distilled into formats the users could easily understand. Nearly all faculty members from each department worked closely with the design team, contributing ideas, commenting on plans, and developing equipment lists. This inclusive approach made everyone feel like they were part of the project and its success.
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From the beginning, we were charged with putting science on display and designing the building as a teaching tool. We achieved this through design features such as a solar system model embedded in the interior flooring, which extends outside and to the edge of the site. A geological timeline embedded in the building's main sidewalk has cast metal plaques marking the time interval for each geological epoch since Earth's formation. Geology classes can use large rocks uncovered during excavation to characterize and study sedimentary rock formation. A rainwater harvesting system collects and distributes water to discharge points along the site's perimeter and through a constructed dry stream bed. Waterfalls along the stream bed aerate the water and a three-tiered wetland further filters and cleans the water before it is discharged into the campus stormwater system. The exterior was landscaped with native plants and grasses to eliminate the need for irrigation and demonstrate how plants respond to environmental changes throughout the year. These features and others demonstrate EKU's commitment to sustainability and allowed Phase 2 of the Science Building to be LEED Gold certified.
Pedagogy drove our design of laboratories and classrooms, with flexible zones to accommodate emergent teaching and learning models. The design facilitates interactions that lead to exploration and discovery. Chemistry classrooms and labs are positioned so instruments can be shared easily, and biochemistry labs are situated near molecular biology labs to facilitate collaboration. The environment is designed so that hands-on discussion and explanation are seamlessly interwoven into classrooms that encourage collaborative learning.
The public spaces throughout encourage interaction and collaboration with movable furniture, convenient marker boards, a café, and recessed wall-mounted corridor benches. Teaching spaces and corridors include windows with large expanses of glass that allow natural light to permeate the building. The faculty credits the new building for the significant decrease in absenteeism and dramatic improvements in student achievement, faculty collaboration, and instructor evaluations.
