By D.A. Barber

This West Wing may not boast a president and an oval office, but it has plenty else to impress. Informally called the West Wing, the new addition to the Optical Sciences Center will increase the Center’s size by 47,000 square feet and includes extensive retrofitting of the Center’s present facilities. It will include an entry-level plaza, state-of-the-art teaching and research laboratories, a new exhibit-intensive lobby, an expanded Reading Room, six floors of faculty offices, informal discussion areas, several conference rooms, and a large conference center. The $17 million addition to the Center is expected to be completed by early 2004.

“The $17 million does not include the equipment that goes into the laboratories,” says James Wyant, Director of the Optical Sciences Center. “It’s kind of general purpose laboratories. There is not a particular project that the labs are being built for. It’s just expansion for our current capabilities B we’re adding students, growing both the graduate and undergraduate programs.”

“It’s going to be a wonderful building in terms of laboratory design,” says John Greivenkamp, professor of Optical Sciences, and also the departmental representative working with the architecture team of Phoenix-based Richärd and Bauer. AI try to represent the needs of the department to the architect team to see that the building meets the needs of the department.”

The expansion is a long time coming. By the late 1980’s, the department knew it was running out of room.

“In 1989, we put on a new wing and filled it up in about 10 days. We were all quite surprised,” says Wyant, “We were a graduate program only in terms of education until 1989. At that point we opened our door to an undergraduate program.”

By 2004, Optical Sciences’ new west wing will include:

The Reading Room will be relocated to the West Wing and the present Reading Room shell will become another classroom. The present auditorium and fourth floor research labs will be turned into teaching laboratories to support the growing undergraduate program. Also to support the undergraduate program, several offices, most notably the Academic Programs Office, will be expanded to accommodate the larger program.

The Lobby: This gateway to technology will open doors to a world-class faculty, an undergraduate optical sciences and engineering program, distance learning classes leading to a master’s degree, high-quality post-graduate education, cutting-edge research programs and participation in national and international research partnerships. The Optical Sciences Center lobby is a reflection of the Center’s commitment to generate and disseminate the knowledge that is critical to developments in nearly every field of science and technology. 

Conference Center: The conference center will enable the Optical Sciences Center to transcend classrooms and laboratories by fostering the economic development of the University’s local, national and international industrial partners. According to Greivenkamp, the conference center will Abe able to handle some of the industrial consortia research work that were doing.