CAMPUS NEWS IN OUR ELEMENT
study,” said Lombardi. Lombardi also notes that the students are clearly very pleased with the upgraded classrooms. During a recent chemistry class, she observed that students brought a lot of equipment out to use for their experiment and then carefully put it all away, noticing that there wasn’t even a speck of dust on the tables when they were done.
‘The hands-on experience in the molecular biology lab helps students actually discover the material that they are learning about, rather than learning about it from a lecture.’
Another room that has been upgraded is the geology lab. It was relocated to a larger space, and includes a door connecting the lab section of the room to the classroom section, which is used for geology lectures. New cabinets and furniture have also been put in to place. The newest lab available to Unity College students is the molecular biology lab, which was formerly a classroom, and has been renovated with new cabinets and furnishings. To create this lab, there was input from several professors who are experienced in creating better learning environments for their students. “Before the molecular biology lab was put in place we had to go to storage rooms in order to get the materials needed for the lab which just wasted time,” said secondary education major Chris McArthur ’13. “Now it feels more like a scientific atmosphere because everything is organized and in one place,” added secondary education major Sasha Hamlin ’14. Both McArthur and Hamlin also agree that the new, much larger tables make it easier to do group projects. “The hands-on experience in the molecular biology lab helps students actually discover the material that they are learning about, rather than learning about
it from a lecture,” said Evan Donoso ’16 wildlife biology major. The new labs are greatly beneficial to Unity College students, providing them with an enhanced environment for their hands-on experiential learning practices. “The point of lab work is to be visual and hands-on, to be able to show students the nature of chemical reactions and related phenomena, and have them ‘explore’ that which we present in the classroom through scientific inquiry,” said Lombardi.
Students work on class assignments in the new laboratories. UNITY MAGAZINE SPRING 2014 |
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