While renovations are now underway at the Cooper Science Building of Ball State University, years of planning and preparation are behind it. Jim Lowe, assistant vice president of facilities, planning and management at Ball State, said talks on Cooper Science began in 2014.
“Those discussions continued until we decided at the university to get closer to Cooper’s needs through three phases of work,” Lowe said. “The first phase was the construction of a new building - we built a building of health professions.
Lou said plans were made for building health professions and when construction began, a health college was formed, “so the timing was perfect.”
Several departments felt at home in the building of health professions, such as nurses, social work, athletic training, counseling psychology, speech pathology and audiology - which in Cooper Science made more room for the remaining departments to move around construction.
“We found that the approach for the second phase was to build another new building - the Science Foundation building,” [where] “We would switch chemistry and biology to,” Lou said.
As for the third phase, Lowe said that it was “finally” time to draw attention to the Cooper science building. According to Kevin Smith, assistant dean at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Humanities, after the departments of biology and chemistry moved out, other departments were able to move to the eastern end of Cooper Science.
“Other departments that were in the western end of Cooper, especially geography and physics, geography and meteorology, and then astronomy, moved their offices to the eastern end,” Smith said. “So that made it possible to start work on rebuilding the western half of Cooper.”
The sun is shining behind a crane at the top of the new Foundation Sciences building at the southern end of the campus on November 18, 2020 in Ball State. The new building is planned to replace the original Cooper Science Complex built in the late 1960s. Jacob Musselman, DN
Smith said that the area east of the planetarium is in significant restructuring, demolished to the base and rebuilt.
“What will happen is that the space will be rearranged during the next summer, and that will be a complicated maneuver, but you have, in that space, geography and meteorology,” [and] physics and astronomy, “said Smith.
According to Smith, the Department of Environment, Geology and Natural Resources will be one of the units moving into Cooper after it is rebuilt. This department, as it stands, is scattered all over the campus.
“In that department, you have the Faculty of Natural Resources, which deals with soil quality and soil science. “You have the Faculty of Geology, which also deals with minerals and soils,” Smith said. “It simply came to our notice then [the reconstruction of the Cooper Science Building is] enabling them and their students to be in the same field, in the same research area, with modern new facilities. ”
In addition to finding its home, the Department of Environment, Geology and Natural Resources, according to Smith, also has a Laboratory for Applied Anthropology - which consists of an archeology unit and a department of anthropology. Lou said that when all the departments within the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Humanities move in, the construction of the eastern end will begin.
Lou said he is very grateful to the Indiana General Assembly for funding $ 59.9 million in the Cooper Science Building. He said the grant allows for the renovation of Cooper Science to include both sustainable and collaborative workspaces and laboratories.
“We’re creating a digital lab at the east end of the building, a community meeting room on the south side of the building, re-establishing an observatory - making the building much more sustainable,” Lou said. “The building will be connected to geothermal systems, which will start saving even more money or making even more savings.”
Our goal is to continue to create spaces that are flexible learning spaces that are usable and collaborative spaces for all the departments located in that particular building. ”
The western end of Cooper Science is expected to be completed by spring 2023, and construction of the eastern end will take effect immediately - it is expected to be completed by spring 2024.
Contact Kamrin Tomlinson with comments via email at [email protected] or on Twitter @ kamrinvrites.