College Resource Information

John A. Widtsoe Building Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum Carl F. Eyring Science Center Cluff Building Benson Building The Lytle Preserve

Skaggs Ranch Ezra Taft Benson Agriculture and Food Institute USDA Forest Service Shrub Science Laboratory Other Laboratory and Field Resources

John A. Widtsoe Building

History

John A. Widtsoe, once a BYU teacher, was a leading scientist in agriculture and soil chemistry. He was also an apostle of the LDS Church and a member of the BYU Board of Trustees. This building was completed in 1968.

Current Use

The nine-story building is the home of the College of Life Sciences. Numerous offices, laboratories, and classrooms are housed within the building. Each floor represents a specific area of study. Classrooms in the building's basement are dedicated to marine biology, and the hallways are lined with 15 live aquariums. On the fourth floor there is a small lab for mobile field equipment for teaching and research in plant physiology including: pressure bomb for measuring stem water potential, platinum oxygen electrode set up for measuring oxygen uptake and production on small plant samples. Lab facilities include, centrifuge and Beckman UV-Visible spectrophotometer and also a lot of high-vacuum glassware.

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Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum

History

The museum is a gift of Monte L. Bean, a prominent Seattle businessman, and his wife, Birdie. This building was completed in 1978.

Current Use

Exhibits and collections of biological specimens are housed in the M.L. Bean Life Science Museum. The exhibits include habitat studies of local as well as exotic plant and animal species and a large and valuable collection of trophies from North America, Africa, and Asia.

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Carl F. Eyring Science Center

History

This center was dedicated in 1950 and named for Carl F. Eyring, who was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for nearly 30 years. In 1950, it was the largest academic building in the Mountain West at 167,000 square feet and BYU's first building to have an elevator.

It was renovated from 1995 through 1997. The building was completely gutted, and the steep lecture halls were removed. The structure was also strengthened for earthquake resistance.

Current Use

The building houses science departments including the Nutrition, Dietetics, & Food Science department. There are many hands-on physics demonstrations throughout the hallways and lobbies, along with a life-sized model of a dinosaur, the blue and yellow colored Allosaurus. A Foucault Pendulum swings in the lobby, and a new 16-inch telescope was donated and installed in the Orson Pratt Observatory during the renovation. Laboratories can be found throughout the building including the Sensory Lab with its Taste Panels, the Food Quality Assurance Lab, and the Pendulum Court Cafe - a full service cafeteria run by students and interns during the fall and winter semesters.

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Cluff Building

History

On 4 January 1892 when the new Academy Building was dedicated, the principalship of the Academy formally passed from Karl G. Maeser to Benjamin Cluff, Jr. "The future, too, as we now view it is full of bright promises and encouraging signs, which with the blessings of God . . . and with the united efforts of the board, the faculty and the students, the aims and desires of the great founder, President Brigham Young, will be fully realized." -Benjamin Cluff, Jr.

Current Use

The Benjamin Cluff, Jr. Botanical Laboratory was completed in the summer of 1954 and is used for agricultural projects.

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Benson Building

This building facilitates many needs with its several computers and 8 microcalorimeters capable of measuring respiration and metabolic heat loss on small amounts of tissues at a range of temperatures. Located on the main level there is a walk-in growth room and two large plant growth chambers. An isotope ratio mass spectrometer with elemental analyzer is also located in this building. Also a carbon-14 dating laboratory is here to be found. The first ever in Utah.

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The Lytle Preserve

The Lytle Preserve in southwestern Utah provides a 460-acre area as an outdoor classroom in the northernmost extension of the Mojave Desert. It is managed for natural study and ecological research in a unique desert setting.

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Skaggs Ranch

Farm and ranch applied agriculture is accomplished at the 9,388-acre BYU Skaggs Research Ranch near Malta, Idaho.

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Ezra Taft Benson Agriculture and Food Institute

The major objective of the Benson Institute is to raise the quality of life among the people of the world through improved nutrition and enlightened agricultural practices. Emphasis is placed on teaching and training students who wish to work in foreign countries and on training people from those countries in agriculture and food science practices that can be used to improve life. Research to improve agricultural practices, family nutrition, and appropriate technology is encouraged.

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USDA Forest Service Shrub Science Laboratory

Housed on the BYU campus, this laboratory supports one of the finest research programs on native shrubs in the world. Here eleven PhD research scientists with adjunct facility appointments work with BYU faculty members and graduate students. Laboratories, greenhouses, and gardens on campus and around the state support studies on desert shrubs.

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Other Laboratory and Field Resources

On the Provo campus are an arboretum, a small animal vivarium, a tissue culture room, and several environmental chambers. Laboratory facilities include gas chromatographs-mass spectrometers, isotope ratio mass spectrometers, transmission and scanning electron microscopes, ultra centrifuges, visible ultraviolet and infrared spectrophotometers, gas chromatographs, high-performance liquid chromatographs, infrared gas analyzers, atomic absorption spectrophotometer, inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometer, ion chromatograph, near infrared spectrophotometer, and many other items. Besides excellent greenhouse facilities and environmental chambers, the college has a horticulture study area where all-American vegetable and flower selections are grown.

Faculty and graduate students are currently engaged in a number of significant and interesting research projects, funded both internally and externally. Some of these are: mineral uptake by plants; ecology and seed physiology; photosynthetic rate and water-use efficiency in plants; plant breeding and molecular genetics; forage research; and environmental science.