Given dedicated space for both lecture and lab, students can experience the full arc of scientific research.

Susan Wessler gazes around the brand-new science learning laboratory with a mixture of pride and anticipation.

On one side of the blue-and-white checkered hallway, there’s a wet lab with most of the same equipment found in her plant genetics research lab one building away. Just across the hall is a discussion room and computer lab, with new Mac laptops for 25 students.

The Campbell Science Learning Laboratory, which opened at the University of California, Riverside, in early July, is designed to integrate teaching and hands-on experimental science. It aims to give incoming freshmen the experience of working in a real genetics laboratory, down to the radio playing music and the coffee machine. “For many students, this will be their first biology course—something very different from traditional, impersonal lecture courses,” says Wessler.

Special spaces devoted to exploring science are beginning to appear on university campuses, changing the way science courses are organized and taught. “We were losing a lot of students who are interested in majoring in sciences because of big lecture courses,” says Richard Losick, a professor of biology at Harvard University who has launched two HHMI-supported lab spaces.

When Wessler began teaching undergraduate biology courses at the University of Georgia more than two decades ago, the experience was not what she had hoped. “To be honest, it was disappointing,” she says. She noticed something peculiar in the students when she saw them in lectures and when they worked on projects in her research lab: “I would walk out of the classroom and people wouldn’t be particularly excited. But the undergraduates in the lab were bouncing off the walls.” Seeing the instant engagement in the laboratory got her thinking about better ways to keep students engaged in science.

With support from an HHMI professor grant, awarded in 2006, Wessler developed a course that replicated her research program in an undergraduate classroom laboratory, allowing students to analyze transposable DNA—small pieces of DNA that can jump from one location to another inside a cell’s genome. At the same time, she spearheaded the design of a special place to teach the unusual class—with all the elements of a working lab space. When Wessler made the move from Georgia to UC Riverside last year, bringing the lab and the class were part of the deal. The Riverside lab is named after the late Neil Campbell, an alum and coauthor of the biology textbook used in many high school and college introductory courses.

The crossover between discovery and practice in such learning spaces means that concepts get put to work immediately, and lab isn’t just an add-on to lecture-based learning. “Rather than going to the lab the next day, we can do experiments at the same time we discuss concepts,” says James Burnette, a researcher who coordinates Wessler’s class laboratory. Even more importantly, students have the opportunity to repeat experiments if something doesn’t work—just like a research lab—and they must master concepts before moving on to the next project.

The investment in infrastructure isn’t small—Wessler says her space cost $700,000, with nearly three-quarters of that coming from Rochelle Campbell, Neil Campbell’s widow. Now that the lab is paid for and in place, however, Burnette notes that it can be run with nearly the same student lab fees as a typical undergraduate science course.

Illustration: Owen Gildersleeve

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