Buildings and Resources
Building Access
All conference rooms , classrooms, lounges, and building entrances will be locked at closing. Access to buildings during scheduled lockup times is allowed only to those authorized by key and/or card entry. Personnel should not access or stay in buildings after hours except for approved research purposes that cannot wait until normal building hours. Anyone allowed access after-hours is responsible for building security and contents. Academic or club activities cannot be scheduled after hours.
Life Sciences Building (LSB)
History
The Life Sciences Building was completed in Spring 2014. Not only is it the new home for many of the Life Sciences departments, but it is also a gateway for the south end of the BYU campus.
Current Use
Of the college’s seven departments, five are located in the Life Sciences Building: Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Biology, Physiology and Developmental Biology, Plant and Wildlife Sciences, and Health Science. This building includes 16 teaching labs, three auditoriums, four conference rooms and more than 70 academic offices. All of the teaching laboratories, including anatomy labs, are on the second floor—also known as the “student” floor. The built-in common areas surrounding the lab classrooms include tables, couches and vending machines. Students can reserve conference rooms for study groups or other meetings. This “student” floor also houses Student Services (the college’s student advisement center), a Biology 100 help center, other areas where students can meet with teaching assistants, and large computer labs.
Building Hours
All study rooms, classrooms, lounges, and building entrances will be locked at closing.
Monday through Friday: 6:30 a.m. - 11 p.m.
- Hallway and stairwell doors on floors 3, 4, and 5 lock at 7 p.m.
- Saturday: 6:30 a.m. - 6 p.m.
- Sunday: Church hours as scheduled
- Closed all University holidays
Carl F. Eyring Science Center (ESC)
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.
George Albert Smith Fieldhouse (SFH)
History
Construction of the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse, which bears the name of the eighth president of the LDS Church, began in 1950. The "fieldhouse" concept allowed physical education and conditioning during all seasons in an indoor environment. Originally the west annex was covered with sawdust. Weekly devotionals and forums, student assemblies, concerts and civic activities, and graduation exercises all occurred here before the Marriott Center opened in 1971.
Current Use
Athletes are able to train and condition in the building's state-of-the-art weight training facility. Coaches administer their programs from offices here. Students and staff lift weights, jog, and do aerobics. Fans come to cheer on the intercollegiate volleyball and intramural basketball teams.
Stephen L Richards Building (RB)
History
Stephen L Richards (besides being a proponent of physical education and good sportsmanship) served on the BYU Board of Trustees, as assistant commissioner of Church education, and as a counselor in the First Presidency. The building was one of the finest facilities in the nation when it was completed in 1971.
Current Use
The Richards Building houses the Dance Department, lab facilities for Family, Home and Social Sciences, and Campus Life Services, including Student Wellness and Student Activities. It also contains several offices and research labs for the Department of Exercise Sciences. The building contains five gymnasiums, three heated swimming pools, five dance studios, and various other rooms.
Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum (MLBM)
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.
Life Sciences Greenhouses (LSGH)
Current Use
Located at 1000 East and 820 North next to Kiwanis Park in Provo, the new greenhouses offer sophisticated features that will provide enhanced research and educational opportunities. Two isolation, or exclusion rooms, are enclosed with fine nylon mesh screens to keep out insects that spread viruses. A sunken room allows growing specimen trees and taller tropical plants in the ground while an assortment of plants will be grown in maneuverable containers. Landscape Design students will be able to manipulate the plants to create new designs.
The greenhouses consist of four wings, each 30 by 125 feet. Two wings are dedicated to research, one wing as a classroom area, and the other set aside for plant collections. The new facility offers twelve-foot sidewalls, an additional four feet compared to the old greenhouses. This gives growers extra vertical room to grow specialty crops. The outside covering of the greenhouses consists of a double layer of a plastic-like polycarbonate material. “Ribs” between the layers provide strength and “dead air” that acts as insulation from outside heat and cold. A light sensor determines when more or less light is needed, and a shade cloth opens and closes automatically.
Ezra Taft Benson Building (BNSN)
Current Use
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.
The Lytle Preserve
Current Use
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.
USDA Forest Service Shrub Science Laboratory
Current Use
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.
Other Laboratory and Field Resources
On the Provo campus are an arboretum, 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.