It might make science majors cringe, but a useful metaphor for understanding the extraordinary
change in undergraduate science education taking place in the opening this autumn of the Jordan
Hall of Science is to call it a quantum leap.
Properly, this would mean the smallest possible change as electrons zipping around in an
atom shift from one energy level to another. But the conventional use of the term is most
appropriate to the Jordan -- progress that is sudden, enormous and illuminating.
Joseph Marino, dean of the College of Science, uses plain English to convey Jordan
Hall's significance. "The magnitude of this project is unparalleled in the United States," he said
while giving a building tour in August. "No other university, whether it's Harvard or other
schools in the top 10 or 20, has put an emphasis on science the way Notre Dame has."
The University's administration, the trustees and donors, the building's designers and the
science faculty have poured $70 million and many years into Jordan Hall's ingenious uses of
space and cutting-edge teaching technology to make sure assessments like Marino's are no
hyperbole. As students prepared to start the 2006-7 academic year, work crews and Notre Dame
scientists were putting the finishing touches on the hall's four-story, 202,000-square feet interior.
Two of the new building's chief virtues -- its size and its layout -- will provide students
with what Marino calls an "unconstrained learning exposure to science." Roomy common areas
give students places to study together between classes. Lecture halls and labs were designed with
the same ideas in mind: using space and equipment to prompt creative thinking, interdisciplinary
learning and more frequent interactions among students and teachers.
Gone from the undergraduate experience are the cramped, chaotic labs that tested
students' patience. Jordan's 40 laboratories will more than double students' work space, even
accounting for the 20 percent increase the facility will allow in the registration capacity of most
lab-course sections. Many labs are adjacent to a data-analysis room, so students won't lose time
between experimentation and analysis the way they formerly did.
The increased research activity will have a lighter environmental impact. State-of-the-art
fume hoods and evaporators, for example, will drastically reduce water use and improve air
quality in the building.
Marino says the new hall will give students "a more realistic view of how science is
done," whether in academia or the premier laboratories of the private sector. Equally important to
him, however, is the intellectual boost he believes the hall will offer.
"We want to prepare independent thinkers and leaders," he said. "The building itself isn't
going to do everything. But if you don't have the top facilities, you can't dream."
If the space allotted for undergraduate science has improved, consider some of the new
teaching technologies available this fall. Scratching the surface from north to south, Jordan's new
venues include:
-- The Multimedia Visualization Theatre. Most will see the semidetached, domed octagon
as a 136-seat planetarium. It will serve a planetarium's purpose, making use either of digital
software that can take audiences to the moon, Mars or beyond the Milky Way, or of live images
gathered from the observatory on Jordan's roof. But it also will be used to immerse students --
or, on weekends, visitors -- in three-dimensional learning experiences of unprecedented clarity in
fields ranging from cell biology to organic chemistry to architecture. A bank of 11 computers will
coordinate a pair of first-in-the-world Sony projectors to generate full-dome images of up to 16
million pixels and match them with a 9000-watt JBL surround-sound speaker system.
-- Twin 250-seat lecture halls located off the ground floor concourse. Each auditorium
features three 21-by-12 foot screens where teachers might project videos, computer simulations,
diagrams from an electronic whiteboard or real-time footage of demonstrations they are
conducting in the front of the room. Students will sit in terraced rows as in many traditional
lecture halls, but the chairs will swivel to allow students from one row to discuss lecture points
across a table with those behind them. Instructors will be able to solicit student feedback through
a wireless response system available throughout the room.
-- The Great Hall. Stretching the length of the building, the hall is lined with display
cases featuring museum-quality exhibits of Notre Dame research. At the hall's southern end,
projectors located under each of the upper floors will show looping films covering various science
topics on the white space of the opposite wall.
-- The Center for Health Sciences Advising. An expansion of the Preprofessional Studies
office, the center will be open to all Notre Dame students interested in exploring careers in
medicine, dentistry, public health, radiology and other health fields. Flat-panel televisions in the
adjacent lobby will supplement students' use of center resources between classes. The center will
direct undergraduates to research and internship opportunities that may prepare them for
professional life.
-- The Observatory. When complete, the observatory will house a telescope unsurpassed
by any other in the Midwest. Nine pedestals lining the outdoor observation deck support smaller
telescopes for hands-on undergraduate learning. In conjunction with the University's access to the
Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in Arizona, the Jordan observatory represents a major
step forward in the quality of students' research opportunities in astronomy and related
disciplines.
Jordan's other major features include a greenhouse, vastly improved access to Notre
Dame's legendary collection of 600,000 plant and animal specimens in a new Museum of
Biodiversity, and an advanced computing lab that will encourage new course offerings and
interdisciplinary research based on computer simulations.
Jordan Hall is named for primary benefactor John W. "Jay" Jordan '69, a Chicago-based
investment executive who chairs the Investment Committee of the University's Board of
Trustees. It was designed by The S/L/A/M Collaborative of Glastonbury, Connecticut, and
constructed by Geupel Demars Hagerman of Indianapolis. The older science buildings on campus
will undergo renovations to better serve Notre Dame's research faculty and graduate students.
(October 2006)
