SEAS Plans for New Labs and Buildings

With about 1,900 undergraduates enrolled in its courses this fall, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is using every bit of available space, from classrooms and laboratories to the hallways of Pierce Hall.

Administrators, who expect enrollment to continue to grow, believe that repurposing existing space and potential future construction can help relieve the strain.

In the long term, they are pinning their hopes on a new SEAS building that will replace the bridge between Pierce and Cruft Halls—the hub of engineering at Harvard—to accommodate classrooms, labs, and support services.

“We cannot not do it,” SEAS Dean Cherry A. Murray said of the “Cornerstone Building,” which is currently in the planning stages.

But SEAS is also working on a number of short-term projects to increase work space for students.

Seniors in Engineering Sciences 100: Engineering Design Projects—the capstone course that all Engineering Sciences concentrators must take to graduate—will begin using a brand-new design space on the ground floor of Maxwell Dworkin within the next two weeks.

The course, which saw enrollment double to 31 this year, previously shared space in Pierce Hall with another course. Students are cramped—particularly as they begin building their prototypes.

“It’s just in time,” said ES100 professor Robert J. Wood.

The new teaching lab replaces the Maxwell Dworkin café that was shut down in 2009.

The space is equipped to facilitate all aspects of the design process, according to Anas Chalah, director of instructional laboratories at SEAS—from creating an initial design on the computer to building a prototype and fabricating the final product.

“There’s a lot of flexibility built in,” said SEAS Director of Capital Projects Pamela C. Redfern, describing features such as mobile tables, writable walls, and power connections in the ceiling.

Wood cites the space’s custom-made, transparent door—the only aspect of the space that is incomplete—as another important feature that will allow undergraduates to see and learn from the work of their peers.

“I think it would [foster] a greater sense of unity amongst all of the concentrators, for sophomores and juniors to walk by ... and look forward to that,” he said.

The desire to promote community has motivated the creation of an adjoining common space to the teaching lab specifically for the Harvard College Engineering Society. Plans are also underway for an Applied Math lounge area.

The new lounge, slated to be on the top floor of Pierce Hall, is currently in the “thinking phase,” according to SEAS Executive Dean Fawwaz Habbal, and should be complete next summer.

“We have this very large concentration and the requirements of the concentration are such that you could have two students who never take a course together,” said Margo S. Levine, assistant director for undergraduate studies in Applied Mathematics. “That creates this sort of very dispersed community.”

She said she hopes the space will be a site for social events, collaborative learning, and teaching opportunities.

“If you want to do it right, you will need [a] significant amount of active learning,” he said of SEAS’ teaching philosophy.

SEAS’ rethinking of “active learning” is not unique. Universities across the country, including MIT, are experimenting with classroom design in an effort to optimize student experience, according to Habbal.

He estimated that SEAS has spent about $5 million on teaching labs in the last five years, an investment that has tripled the amount of student lab space in Pierce Hall.

“We’re utilizing every space that one can imagine can be utilized,” he said, adding that teaching labs even overflow into the hallway and several administrators have already been moved to the Northwest Science Building. “One last frontier is the basement of Maxwell Dworkin.”

In fact, that space will soon be filled too. Electrical engineering lab space in the basement is poised to double by the spring term to accommodate growth in ES50 and ES1.

—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu