This article was previously printed in the Fall 2021 issue of .
For Dr. Rebecca Barlag, BS ’98, the OHIO experience has meant the narrow halls and dimly lit basement rooms of Clippinger Laboratories. First as a student and now as a professor of instruction, she’s begun almost every school year in Clippinger 194. But spring semester brought a new tradition—in a new home.
In late 2020, the University wrapped up construction on a 34,000-square-foot Chemistry Building, converting a parking lot near Clippinger and Emeriti Park into a center for groundbreaking learning and research for future generations of scientists and scholars. Standing three stories tall, the building’s first floor features undergraduate instructional labs for organic and analytical chemistry surrounded by student collaboration space. Its upper two floors house open-concept research labs—synthetic labs on the second floor and instrumentation-based labs on the third—as well as faculty and graduate student offices.
This new epicenter for cutting-edge research will give students hands-on experience with the latest technologies, says Dr. Stephen Bergmeier, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
“A lot of new techniques have come out since Clippinger was built and dedicated in 1965,” he says, also noting the more advanced research projects faculty and students have taken on over the years. “The instruments tend to be more specific, so you need more of them.”
At the same time, enrollment in OHIO’s chemistry programs has exploded. Barlag, director of the Forensic Chemistry program, recalls having 35 students in her lab during her first year teaching in 2004. In 2020, she had almost 100 students.
“The labs were too crowded in Clippinger,” she says. “We desperately needed this space to accommodate and better serve our students.”
The building was designed with this growth in mind—and with the goal of investing in innovative research and bringing it to the forefront of campus. The wall of windows on the building’s north side drenches labs and offices in sunlight while putting science on display. And various configurations of open, communal spaces allow for interaction, collaboration and study.
“The non-cramped nature of the building allows students that space to do their studying outside the lab, and that’s something I just love to see because it was impossible in Clippinger,” Bergmeier says.
One new space in particular had Adam Hering, BS, BA ’22, eagerly anticipating his senior-year research activities. Greeting visitors as they enter the building’s lobby, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) lab’s floor-to-ceiling windows bring chemical instrumentation, teaching and research out into the open.
“The lab is busy all the time,” says Hering, who spends about 10 hours a week in the NMR lab researching how smaller molecules interact with larger ones. “You get to see people w