Chemistry Building Location Issue

This page serves to educate students on the "Chemisty Building" issue. Last year, there was discussion about building a new chemistry building off campus. Once students and faculty got involved in the discussion, President Boren made the decision to keep undergraduate chemistry on campus, thus maintaining the "walking campus" aspect that is characteristic of the University of Oklahoma.

We strive to keep undergraduate classes on campus both now and in the future.

 

The following letter was written to President Boren by Megan Aary, 2006-2007 OU AIChE President, outlining the majority student view on the chemistry building issue:

 

February 3, 2007


Dear President Boren:
Enclosed is a petition by OU students strongly urging you to locate the part of the new chemistry building for undergraduate chemistry courses, including laboratory courses, on the main campus. 
We have discussed several main reasons why chemistry undergraduate teaching should remain on the main campus, and not 2 miles away on the south campus.

  1. Undergraduate students will have to spend significant extra time traveling to and from their chemistry classes and labs if teaching moves to the south campus.  This will have a large impact, since more than 5000 undergraduate students from many different departments need to take chemistry to fulfill their requirements. 
  2. We understand that the current plan is to build the chemistry undergraduate teaching labs on the south campus after the faculty research labs are built.  Freshmen chemistry students must come to lab twice a week.  In the organic chemistry lab course, which is required for pre-med students and many other students, students will have to come to the south campus three times a week (two times for the lab and one time for the "recitation" class for this course).  This amount of time greatly takes away from students' study and work time.
  3. Thousands of undergraduates should not have to travel to the south campus to take chemistry classes when a few professors and graduate students could travel to the main campus to teach these classes.
  4. The building for undergraduate laboratory chemistry classes can easily be built on the main campus. For instance, it would easily fit on the newly-acquired 2.3 acre site at the corner of Jenkins and Lindsey with room to spare for another building.
  5. Having undergraduate chemistry classes on the south campus, with all of the hassle that will be involved for students, will inevitably mean that more science and engineering students will not choose OU in the future.  It is not hard to imagine an OSU ad in the Oklahoman that says, "At the State University, we have your future at heart.  We have purposefully designed our campus so students can walk to ALL of their classes, even science and engineering students who need to take chemistry -the central science."
  6. There is hardly any OU student support for moving chemistry classes to the south campus.  In a poll of students by the Sooner Information Network, only 6% of student said "no" to the question "Should all undergraduate chemistry classes be taught on OU's main campus."  A total of 964 students voted in this poll.

Please consider this petition.  You have accomplished many great things for OU and we wish that this new building will be another one of your notable decisions.
Sincerely yours,

Megan Aary
President, 2006-2007 OU Student Chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers

Daniel Bolgren, 2006-2007 AIChE Officer

Sarah Shobe, 2006-2007 AIChE Officer

 

In response, President Boren wrote the following:

March 5, 2007

 

Ms. Megan Aary
President, OU Student Chapter of the
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
School of Chemical Engineering
Sarkeys Energy Center
100 East Boyd Street, T-335
Norman, OK  73019-1004

Dear Ms. Aary:

I received the letter from you and Daniel Bolgren and Sarah Shobe.  I wanted to let you know that the university does not plan to move undergraduate chemistry classes to the research campus.  They will remain on the North Oval.  I strongly support keeping as many undergraduate classes as possible in the core campus area.

We also plan to keep laboratory classes for undergraduates on the North Oval for at least the next ten years.  We are working on renovated spaces on the North Oval for undergraduate laboratory courses.

Graduate and research laboratories will be moving to the research campus.  These laboratories have been a source of health and safety concerns to me.  In addition, there is no way to allow for necessary growth for graduate and research programs associated with a program of national leadership stature on the North Oval.  We are indeed moving higher in the national ranks each year in the field of Chemistry.   Nearly every leading national program has found it necessary to provide expanded space and state of the art facilities in research campus locations.

After ten years we will again evaluate the sufficiency of our undergraduate laboratories to determine if they can continue to be located on the North Oval.  In the meantime, we will also be working to expand bicycle and walking path connections as well as transportation links between the main campus and the research campus.  Many leading universities locate their scientific laboratories outside of the core campus areas but with healthy and safe pedestrian and bicycle connections.  I personally prefer keeping as many functions as possible located on the core campus to enhance our spirit of community. 

Thank you for sharing your concerns.  I will certainly keep them in mind.  Your own undergraduate studies shall in no way be affected by the necessary progress which we are making on the research campus thanks to the generosity of donors like Charles and Peggy Stephenson.  These facilities are absolutely necessary if we are to reach desired levels of excellence in graduate and research programs which will enhance your undergraduate experience and hopefully your future economic opportunities.

Sincerely,

 

                                                                             David L. Boren,
                                                                             President

 

A few days later, the Oklahoma Daily ran the following article:

 

Boren consents to chemistry petition

By Jake Yandell of The Oklahoma Daily

 

Posted 12:20 a.m., March 8, 2007

 

 

Some students and faculty members have been upset since 2005 that OU could be losing its "walking campus" status.

But, after a letter from President David L. Boren in response to a student petition, there is no more concern about moving undergraduate studies in chemistry to OU’s  research campus.

This week, Boren replied in a letter to concerned students that stated "the university does not plan to move undergraduate chemistry classes to the research campus." Chemistry students and professors have hoped for this outcome since 2005, when the new chemistry building's location at State Highway 9 and Jenkins Avenue was announced. Megan Aary, president of the OU student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, received a reply to students' concerns only days after sending the letter and petition to Boren.

"I was really happy with his fast response," she said. "This is just one more thing that shows what a great president he is."

The OU administration had been developing plans to build a new chemistry building near the corner of state Highway 9 and Jenkins Avenue on the research campus. This construction would take place in two phases. The first phase would include graduate and research studies. The second phase, which would be realized several years later, would include undergraduate studies.

Moving undergraduate studies in chemistry to the research campus would affect approximately 5,000 students every semester who need to take chemistry for degree requirements, said Roger Harrison, associate professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering.

"It's two miles from the main campus to the south campus, so walking to the new building would be out of the question," Harrison said in an address to the OU Faculty Senate in 2005.

Faculty members aren't the only ones who have been involved in the debate. Students like Aary have been concerned about what moving undergraduate studies to the research campus could mean for OU.

"A lot of students, that's how they make a decision about where they're going to college," Aary said.

Aary has a best friend who chose OU over another college on the basis that she could walk to her classes, she said.

"I've never heard anyone say, 'Well, why not just put [the chemistry building] on south campus.' Everyone's always responded with, 'That's a terrible idea,'" Aary said.

Harrison said he has been leading a debate on campus about alternatives to the research campus location since he found out about it in fall of 2005. UOSA held a forum and passed a bill about the chemistry building's location. Harrison has addressed the OU Faculty Senate and has been quoted in three articles about the building. In all of the debate, however, students and faculty members did not receive a reply from administrators, Harrison said.

Aary has been circulating the petition about the research campus proposal since last year. Aary mailed a letter from the AICE last week. The letter, with the petition enclosed, was an appeal to Boren about the research campus proposal in an attempt to revive a topic that Aary said had died.

Nicholas Hathaway, vice president for Administrative Affairs, said the administration has considered student input throughout the planning process for the new chemistry building.

"With the president’s strong support last year, the Faculty Senate commissioned a task force that considered input from across campus relating to the location of future instruction, including in the life sciences, on the main campus," said Hathaway.

The second phase of construction is still years away and there is always opportunity for dialogue, Hathaway said.

According to the letter from Boren, phase one, the graduate and research laboratories, still will move to the research campus. The current facilities have been "a source of health and safety concerns," Boren said.

Boren said there is no way to allow for necessary growth for graduate and research programs associated with a program of a national leadership stature on the North Oval.

This expansion is meant to facilitate the exciting growth in research studies at OU, Hathaway said.