UGA's new Science Learning Center will open as classes begin Aug. 11

The smell of bagels and coffee filled the air Friday in the University of Georgia's newest big building - the Science Learning Center. It's set to welcome 10,000 to 12,000 students a day when UGA classes begin Aug. 11.

As workers complete the final touches and install computers and lab equipment, a bagel shop is already up and running, getting its routines established before the wave of coffee-craving students arrives.

The $44.7 million, three-story building across the street from Stegeman Coliseum is more than just 116,000 square feet of new classroom and student laboratory space, said Ron Cervero, UGA's associate vice president for instruction, who led a tour of the nearly completed facility Thursday. The building has been under construction on UGA's South Campus for just under two years.

"We see this as an opportunity to really reshape and transform science education," Cervero said as he stood in one of the building's 33 gleaming instructional labs.

Classrooms and labs are set up to encourage interactive learning, even as much as possible in the two 280-seat lecture halls.

Two 72-seat "SCALE-UP" classrooms (acronym for Student-Centered Active Learning Environment) will have students sitting around eight circular work areas in groups of nine, with the instructor in the middle.

Those work areas even have places where students can stash their book bags.

"It might seem trivial, but when you're a faculty member, it's not," Cervero said.

"Students don't just sit here and learn content. They're very active," said Eddie Watson, director of UGA's Center for Teaching and Learning, which beginning last year has been training faculty in how they can use the building's interactive technology.

"We've had lots of study and discussion about what do you do with a space like this, instead of just, 'Figure it out,' " said Sherry Clouser, assistant director of learning technologies for the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Conceived somewhat as a South Campus, science-oriented companion to the Miller Learning Center, the new building will be home for most of UGA's undergraduate science lab work.

It's almost entirely classrooms and labs - labs for botany, cellular and molecular biology, organic chemistry, biological sciences, physics, and even two ecology student labs, along with classrooms with a total of 1,512 seats. Most of the students there will be undergraduates, mainly first- and second-year students.

Faculty offices are absent, but instead the building is dotted with small spaces where students can work together in small groups or individually with tutors, or where teaching assistants (about 500 will work in the building) or other small groups can hold meetings.

There's a mother's room, with a baby-changing table and a smooth rocking chair, and a space for a science librarian.

Workers have also installed lots of "soft" seating in hallways and alcoves, where up to about 300 students can study or relax between classes.

The Science Learning Center won't have the late-hour and weekend hours of the Miller Learning Center. The new building will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, closed on weekends and holidays.

Follow education reporter Lee Shearer at www.facebook.com/LeeShearerABH or https://twitter.com/LeeShearer.