UC Riverside opens 100,700-square-foot instructional building with labs, classrooms and dance studio
The four-story Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Facility held its first classes Sept. 24 and seats about 1,700, the university said. It adds six biology labs and four chemistry labs.
UC Riverside opened a four-story, 100,700-square-foot instructional building this fall, the university said in an article published Sept. 29.
Construction on the Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Facility, known as the UTLF, wrapped up during the summer, and classes began there when the fall quarter started Sept. 24, according to the university.
What is inside
The building seats about 1,700, the university said. It has 19 classrooms of small to medium size and two lecture halls, along with 10 teaching labs: six for biology and four for chemistry.
A dance studio of 3,400 square feet opens onto an outdoor performance space of 2,700 square feet.
The university said the building raises general assignment seats by 18%, biology class lab seats by 54% and chemistry lab seats by 20% over current campus capacity.
The facility was designed for lower-division requirement classes, the article said, citing the campus Office of Planning, Design, and Construction.
UCR said the project belongs to a $1.5 billion campus building program this decade and will help meet demand for classroom space as enrollment grows.
Labs
The article said the campus had not added major instructional wet labs in years.
Jon Allen, who supervises lab research for the Evolution Ecology and Organismal Biology department, said the space fits more students and lets the department add sections of courses that have had long wait lists, according to the article. That frees room in Spieth Hall for other wait-listed labs, he said.
"These new facilities give us both the capacity and the modern teaching environment we need to serve more students while maintaining an outstanding educational experience," Len Mueller, chair of the chemistry department, said in the article.
Dance studio
The studio is called Studio 118. The university said it is larger than each of the three studios the Department of Dance uses in two other campus buildings.
"We've been in need of a dance studio for at least a decade if not more," Jacqueline Shea Murphy, a professor and director of the department, said in the article.
About 50 dance faculty, staff and students marked the opening Sept. 23 by processing to the new studio from the Arts Building, the university said.