Transforming Student Experiences With College Funding for Equipment and Facilities
Decades of use takes a toll on a university’s facilities and equipment. The College of Letters and Science is investing $5 million in instructional equipment and facilities to improve the educational experiences of UC Davis students. These investments have already transformed learning opportunities across campus.
The funding for the improvements is the result of two College programs that include $2 million for instructional equipment and $3 million for infrastructure and facilities. As of January 2024, many of these improvements are now in place.
New recording studio and music course
In what had once been a storage closet behind the copy room in the Music Building, there is now a complete recording studio wired to capture sound in the practice rooms below. Sam Nichols, chair of the Department of Music, used College program funds to build the recording studio where students can learn to use all of the equipment.
“The idea is to put students in a position to learn to make their own recordings at home or to work in a professional studio,” said Nichols.
He led the effort with the help of staff and students who worked together installing new recording equipment and even removable sound-absorbing panels for the walls. The equipment included microphones, a sound mixer, speakers, amplifiers, cables and stands.
This new recording studio is the epicenter of a new course; for one quarter each year, students will attend a weekly lecture and twice-weekly labs to work on the equipment.
New equipment for printmaking and painting
Art studio facilities for printmaking and painting have received funding for new equipment and upgrades. These include a new drying rack for printmaking and a vacuum table for screenprinting, as well as new computers, a printer, sinks, storage and other improvements.
“Before this, it’s been a desert of funding,” said Quillan, referring to instructional equipment.
Quillan has served as the art department’s printmaking and painting lab technician for 17 years and said this was the first time he’s seen funding for these kinds of improvements. For art studio classes, materials fees pay for the materials students use, but those fees don’t pay for instructional equipment like stools that wear down with use or new equipment like the department has just received.
Storage and production capacity for ceramics
Producing art requires space, and so do the materials that artists use. This is especially true with ceramics, but until this year the bags of materials have always been stored on the floor.
“You could say that it’s just storage, but it was really difficult to navigate all the materials in this room when everything was on the floor,” said Brian Perkins, who has served as the ceramics lab technician for 16 years.
The storage of materials has now been moved from the floor to a new pallet racking system, which is located in the ceramics studio in TB 9, a building that is included in the National Register of Historic Places. Additional program funding was used to finance other new improvements, including a new kiln and a renovated glaze room.
Perkins said the funding was the largest investment in instructional improvements he’d seen since he took on the role at UC Davis.
Advanced technical equipment for chemistry department
Technical equipment for scientific laboratory courses is critical for preparing students for careers after graduation, but modern equipment can be incredibly expensive.
Serendipitous timing of the College program funding made it possible for the Department of Chemistry to get a deal on specialized equipment for its advanced chemistry labs. The Agilent 6495 instrument, which usually costs around $850,000, was obtained at a discounted price of roughly $220,000.
“The Agilent 6495 Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer is a high-end instrument that will be shared by research and teaching,” said Paul Hrvatin, an instrument specialist in the chemistry department.
This instrument is one of the newest additions to the Chemistry Annex Instrumentation Lab where faculty, students and staff across several advanced courses and various research fields analyze molecular compounds and their interactions at incredibly fine levels.
The facility also advanced its capabilities with the addition of a Cary 60 UV-Vis Spectrophotometer.
Major classroom improvements for Earth and Physical Sciences Building
Physics 7 is a course designed for non-physics majors, taken by students from across UC Davis who major in biology and other sciences. These classrooms are some of the busiest in the Earth and Physical Sciences Building. They serve roughly 5,000 students each year in 60 hours of classes each week and are occupied from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. nearly year-round.
“Some of the older chairs were broken so students could barely sit in them,” said Christopher Brainerd, Department of Physics and Astronomy instructional support unit manager.
In total, five classrooms received significant L&S program funds for repairs and replacements, including ceilings, floors, work tables and chairs. The work was completed by the start of winter quarter 2024.
