by Scott Schrage | University Communication
As the enrollment of Husker chemistry students began climbing, Jody Redepenning understood that the number of hoods and sashes would need to increase in kind.
But the professor and department chair of chemistry wasn’t thinking regalia. The hoods and sashes on his mind: the time-honored exhaust systems and accompanying windows that collectively remove hazardous fumes stirred up in the standard organic chemistry lab.
When Redepenning saw the Department of Chemistry outpacing even the marked growth of many peers across the university, he realized it was past time to optimize the lab space and resources available in its longtime home, Hamilton Hall. There was also the not-insignificant fact that the “senior” label applied to more than just students taking classes in the venerable nine-story tower.
“This building is 50 years old, and a 50-year-old undergraduate lab is an old lab,” Redepenning said. “It needed to be done.”
Accordingly, the Department of Chemistry is now two-thirds of the way through a three-phase, $12 million renovation project that is again putting its undergraduate labs on par with those at other top-flight, research-intensive universities.
“This gets us where we need to be in terms of safety and the ability for students to practice modern techniques of doing organic chemistry,” he said.
Read more:
https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/chemistry-department-rolling-out-lab-expansions-upgrades-for-students/