Inside the Hanson expansion

The Vision                                                                              

An expansion of the Hanson Hall of Science will build on Augustana’s excellent programs and exceptional tradition of success in the natural sciences, transforming the way our science faculty teach. The spaces in the planned addition are designed to promote faculty-led research and active, engaged learning. Flexible studio classroom and lab layouts will adapt to the needs of teachers and students within minutes, allowing ease of movement between lectures, demonstrations, online research, teamwork, bench research and presentations. The labs and classrooms in the planned four-floor, 22,000-square-foot addition will accommodate the learning styles of a changing generation of students and the demands of employers expecting the highest levels of proficiency, problem-solving skills and collaborative leadership in college graduates.

The expansion also will alleviate scheduling pressures on the current building created by increasing numbers of science majors and students. Our student body has increased from an average of 2,100 in the 1990s to an average of 2,500 since 2006. While many small, liberal arts colleges are experiencing a decrease in enrollment, trends at Augustana indicate our student body could surpass 2,600 by 2019. This fall, there are 60 more full-time students enrolled than at the same time in 2015. In less than 10 years, the total number of declared majors in the sciences has risen from 491 to 572, and we expect similar growth in science enrollment over the next decade.

The Hanson Hall of Science expansion will add five large, studio-style, flexible class/lab learning spaces; four interdisciplinary research labs; and four faculty offices with adjoining space for discussion and collaboration. It is designed to encourage best practices in science teaching and to seamlessly connect to the existing Hanson Hall of Science.

The Need: Addressing a Changing Student Body, Curriculum and Pedagogy

In 1998 when the current science building opened, it was the largest, most modern academic building on campus (114,000 square feet). For years, faculty and students thrived by using the space and equipment in Hanson for successful scientific inquiry. At that time, Google was less than three months old; the human genome had not been sequenced; Pluto was still a planet; and wi-fi, smart phones and YouTube did not exist. Almost 20 years later, much has changed at Augustana and beyond. Enrollment growth, better teaching and learning methods, new majors, and shifting demographics have changed what Augustana needs for students to be successful in the sciences.

Use of Classrooms and Labs

As a liberal arts and sciences college, all students, regardless of their chosen major, take classes and gain competency in science reasoning and methodologies. This means that with a student body of 2,500, enrollment numbers in science courses or lab experiences in the facility total more than 6,200 each year. Augustana’s student body and excellent science programs have outgrown the building.

• The number of biology and pre-med graduates has increased from around 100 each year in the late 1990s to 130 or 140 in each of the last five years.
• The growth and pedagogical changes in the sciences necessitated additional courses and labs, resulting in 15 biology classes moving out of the Hanson Hall of Science and into other non-science buildings.
• All biology labs must be set up and taken down within each class period because chemistry and environmental studies classes also use the labs. This creates problems for students carrying out Senior Inquiry experiments and ongoing bench research.
• Living and nonliving materials are carried between offices, classrooms and storage rooms to accommodate the needs of the regularly changing groups of students using the same space.

The increased interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs

at Augustana mirrors a nationwide trend as students respond to the message that the jobs of the future will rely on skills in these areas. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology projects a need for approximately one million more STEM professionals than the United States will produce at the current rate during the next decade. With marketplace demands like these and Augustana’s history of producing successful science graduates, we expect sustained strong enrollment in the sciences.

New Pedagogies ─ Active Learning and Peer Instruction

In recent years, teaching in STEM fields at Augustana has become much more problem-based and student-centered. In the late 1990s, educational researchers began to produce compelling empirical evidence that traditional lecture-style teaching was not as successful in preparing future scientists as the alternative technique known as active learning[1]. Research now shows that students using an active, collaborative science curriculum, that makes use of the modern spaces the expansion will include, averaged about twice the normalized learning gains for low-, intermediate- and high-scoring students when compared to traditional instruction[2].

Although Hanson Hall of Science was designed for the older teaching model, Augustana science professors have used active learning techniques such as studio/workshop-style classrooms, inquiry-based activities, “clickers” and flipped/inverted classrooms, as the space allowed with great success. To make adoption of these and other more interactive teaching methods easier, classrooms will have movable desks, technology and lab equipment. The less time instructors and students spend navigating the classroom as they ask and answer questions, share information and compare results, the more time can be devoted to meaningful learning activities.

More Interdisciplinary Majors

Student demand and changes in science-related fields have led to expansions in Augustana’s science offerings, notably in more interdisciplinary and applied science areas. Interdisciplinary majors challenge students to make connections between distinctly different areas when it may not be obvious how they are interconnected. They produce students with practical skills for the world today. The problems we face are complex, and graduates with practice using a multi-disciplinary approach are ready to offer effective solutions and insights into these multifaceted problems.

Augustana has three interdisciplinary science majors ─ environmental studies, neuroscience and public health. While many of our peer institutions might offer one, Augustana is rather unique in offering all three of these majors. Students in these majors enroll in many courses taught in the science building. Environmental studies and neuroscience both require multiple sections of biology and chemistry, and public health majors must take at least 19 hours of courses in their department.

Environmental studies is a rapidly growing major and, in partnership with Augustana’s Upper Mississippi Center for Sustainable Communities (UMC), is an exciting applied connection between the liberal arts and sciences and problem solving for new or persistent community issues. The UMC facilitates community-identified projects led by faculty members and carried out by classes or groups of students throughout the year (many in the sciences). They use a project-based learning approach to conduct research across academic disciplines and combine coursework with community engagement to develop solutions for identified problems. A wet-lab with appropriate water filtration, computer access, ability to separate "clean" from "dirty" materials, and research/mentoring space currently do not exist on campus and are vital to advancing student learning and research in this field.

Neuroscience is another increasingly popular field, drawing from and contributing to two popular majors on campus: biology and psychology. The major added a third tenure-track position in 2015 and has shown steady growth; neuroscience graduates have increased from five in 2012 to 25 in 2015. The expansion will bring neuroscience students into the main science building by relocating the animal lab and vivarium necessary for their coursework.

Public health was first offered as a major in 2014, and in 2016, a tenure-track position was added. In two years, students majoring in public health have increased from four to 26. It is also a popular secondary area of study with 27 students in the process of completing a public health minor.

Changing Student Demographics

In 1998, Augustana’s student body was 92 percent white and 8 percent minority. Today, 75 percent of our student body is white, and 25 percent is multicultural, much more closely aligning with our national population of 62 percent and 38 percent[3], respectively.

Because students from populations historically underrepresented in the STEM disciplines are now the “new majority” of the Midwest’s population, there is an urgency to remove the barriers to developing a diverse STEM workforce. Augustana is one of 16 schools that make up the National Science Foundation’s Iowa Illinois Nebraska STEM Partnership for Innovation in Research and Education (INSPIRE) alliance. These two-year and four-year colleges and universities receive grant funds to collaborate and provide underrepresented minorities with academic, research, training and mentoring opportunities that will increase their chance of success in STEM majors. The goal is to double the number of “new majority” STEM graduates in the alliance within five years to 350 and to build a foundation for more graduates in the future. 

One of the more successful ways to do this is to engage students early in hands-on research. The four new labs in the Hanson Hall of Science expansion will provide more space and time for first- and second-year students ─ not just juniors and seniors ─ to participate in science research. Funding from the INSPIRE alliance provides these students with stipends to help cover costs associated with staying at school during the summer. With experiences like these, thoughtful advising, and course design that supports students with interest and potential to enter a science major, we are on our way to democratizing access to science learning and success[4].

External research also suggests that working on collaborative projects increases the rate of student retention and that many jobs in STEM fields require employees to work in collaborative environments like those in the proposed expansion[5]. For instance, practicing scientists will test multiple ideas concurrently, learn through the observation of others and work in teams to solve problems. The new flexible classroom spaces are designed to put students in these exact types of situations.

The approaches described above are better for all learners, but in particular, they will help our first-generation and diverse college learners make connections from theory to practice throughout the science disciplines sooner and more often. These pedagogical changes will lead to deeper, more engaged learning and ultimately higher student achievement and success. The expansion of Hanson Hall of Science is designed to accommodate these needs and our growing science programs well into the future.   

Building on Augustana’s Tradition of Science Distinction

Even though scientific equipment, classroom design, majors and programs within our science departments have changed, our students’ capacities for success are a constant. Augustana science majors are smart, inquisitive students that thrive in a learning environment designed to challenge and inspire them. They are accepted by the nation’s best medical and graduate schools at a rate that far exceeds the national average. They become leaders in almost every field of scientific study – fields that have broadened immeasurably since 1998.

• Augustana students’ acceptance rates into graduate science programs are excellent: medical school placement rates are 62 percent compared with 38 percent nationwide in 2015. In the last three years, 74 percent of Augustana students were accepted into dental school while the most recent national average (2013) stands at 47 percent.
• The five-year placement rate for Augustana students in physical therapy graduate programs is 90 percent; optometry school, 92 percent; and pharmacy schools, 95 percent.*
• In the last 25 years, more than 65 percent of Augustana’s chemistry majors have chosen to continue their studies at major universities. Their graduate school placement is virtually 100 percent.*
• Augustana ranks in the top 10 percent of small colleges in the United States for its number of physics majors. (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System)
• Since 1997, the college has had a 100 percent acceptance rate for graduating students applying to master's programs in public health (M.P.H.).*
• Augustana ranks among the top 60 U.S. small liberal arts colleges in the sciences, based on the number of graduates earning a Ph.D. (Survey of Earned Doctorates)

*Augustana College Office of Institutional Research

From public health to neuroscience, students and faculty are exploring scientific frontiers unimaginable just 20 years ago. As technology evolves, creating new fields of study, new ways to research and new industries, Augustana must continue to prepare all of its graduates to adapt, innovate, solve real-world problems and embrace the unknown. The expansion of our science facility will give students and faculty the tools and experience needed to do this. It is a high priority of the college and will support our excellent faculty, top-notch natural science programs, and the increasing number and diversity of Augustana students.