For Immediate Release—Friday, Nov. 10, 2006
Contact:
Mary E. McCrank
Media Relations Officer
(585) 245-5516
SUNY Geneseo to Celebrate Opening of
Integrated Science Center at 2 p.m. Today
GENESEO, N.Y.—The State University of New York at
Geneseo will celebrate the opening of its Integrated Science Center with a
ribbon-cutting ceremony at 2 p.m. today, Friday, Nov. 10.
John H. Marburger III, science advisor to President George
W. Bush and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, will
deliver the keynote address, "Integrating the Sciences: The Importance of
Multidisciplinary Research and Education" at 3 p.m. in 204 Newton Hall. A
reception will follow at 4 p.m. in Newton Hall and the Integrated Science
Center.
At the 2 p.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony, Geneseo President
Christopher C. Dahl will be joined by dignitaries and representatives of the
companies that designed and built the state-of-the-art science center. Those on
hand will include New York State Senator Dale M. Volker, R-Depew; Monroe County
Executive Maggie Brooks; Sam Spata, AIA, director of management and operations
for HOK International Ltd., the architecture firm that designed the ISC; Thomas
Judson, chairman/CEO of The PIKE Company, the Rochester-based company that is
serving as the contractor for the project; and Nicholas Rostow, university
council and vice chancellor for legal affairs for SUNY.
In addition, guided tours of the building will be offered
for faculty, students, the public, guests and the media from noon-2 p.m. today.
The opening of the Integrated Science Center (ISC) will
celebrate Geneseo's continuing excellence as the state's most selective public
institution and mark a new era in science teaching, learning and research in
Western New York. It was built to enable future collaboration among the science
departments in teaching and research and will allow Geneseo—which has
offered combined majors in biophysics, biochemistry, geochemistry and geophysics
for many years—to integrate the sciences.
"This $53
million project represents a significant state investment in science education
and includes $5 million for equipment. Undergraduate research is already a
hallmark at Geneseo. With the addition of our new science center, we can now
offer the highest quality classes, laboratories and research experiences," said
Geneseo Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Katherine Conway-Turner.
"Integrating the sciences within one large complex will
facilitate the kind of interdisciplinary research and discovery that is seldom
seen at an undergraduate institution. Most importantly, this new facility is a
tremendous boost for the production of scientific intellectual capital for the
state of New York."
The Integrated Science Center will be completed in two
phases. Phase I, which began in the fall of 2003, is the $33 million new ISC,
featuring 105,000 square feet and housing 17 instructional lab and 36 faculty
research labs. The building opened for classes this August and houses the
college's departments of geological sciences and biology. Phase II, which will
begin in the fall of 2007, will be a $20 million renovation to Greene Hall,
which connects to the ISC. Greene Hall will continue to house the departments
of chemistry and physics and astronomy.
The facilities and equipment in the ISC include greenhouses
with three research labs and a demonstration lab; an optics lab; a rooftop
astronomy observation deck and dome with a new Meade 20-inch Ritchey-Cretien
reflecting telescope; a wave tank and flume in the hydrology/geology lab;
electron microscopes; X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence units;
geophysical equipment; a confocal microscope; a flow cytometer; and four
environmental chambers.
The atrium of the ISC includes representation of the
sciences with a Foucault pendulum (physics), a two-story, three-dimensional
periodic table of the elements (chemistry); an inlaid geological timeline
(geological sciences); and a glass-etched salamander life cycle (biology).
The New York State Legislature provided the funding for the
ISC and has committed funding for the renovation of Greene Hall. Volker was
instrumental in the Legislature's decision to appropriate the funding. State
Senator Daniel J. Burling, R-Warsaw, also provided support of the projects.
U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence, has secured
funding for the college throughout the past several years, including $150,000
for a cluster computing lab, $250,000 toward the purchase of a linear
accelerator and $300,000 toward the purchase of a
Fourier Transform Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer
that will be used for research of organic and biochemical molecules and will
allow researchers to determine the structure of these molecules.
Before his appointment to serve in the Executive Office of
the President, Marburger served as director of Brookhaven National Laboratory
and as president of SUNY Stony Brook from 1980-1994. He went to Long Island
from the University of Southern California, where he served as a professor of
physics and electrical engineering and chair of physics and dean of the College
of Letters, Arts and Sciences. In 1994, he returned to the faculty at SUNY
Stony Brook, teaching and conducting research in optical science as a
university professor. Three years later, he became president of Brookhaven
Science Associates, a partnership between the university and Battelle Memorial
Institute that competed for and won the contract to operate Brookhaven National
Laboratory.
At USC, Marburger contributed to the rapidly growing field
of nonlinear optics, developing theory for various laser phenomena, and served
as a co-founder of the university's Center for Laser Studies. His teaching
activities included "Frontiers of Electronics," a series of educational
programs on CBS. His presidency at SUNY Stony Brook coincided with the opening
and growth of University Hospital and the development of the biological
sciences as a major strength of the university. Marburger received his
bachelor's degree in physics from Princeton University in 1962 and his Ph.D. in
applied physics from Stanford University in 1967.
For more information about these celebratory events, go to: http://science.geneseo.edu/.
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