New science lab at Andover campus will help Butler Community College students

Butler Community College students taking anatomy and physiology lab courses will no longer have to make the drive to El Dorado for class.

At a January board meeting, Butler officials approved the construction of an anatomy and physiology lab at the school’s Andover campus.

“We’ve known the need was here – it’s been here for a long time,” said Lori Winningham, dean of Butler’s math, science and education division. “It’s just funding, and the stars have finally aligned.”

The lab stations and cabinets to be installed in Butler’s new facility were donated by the Circle School District, which is demolishing its science lab at Circle High School this spring. The desks will be repainted and buffed, Winningham said, so students won’t even know they’re used.

Think of it as a certified pre-owned lab.

“I want to give Circle High a lot of credit – we’re really excited to be able to work with them,” Winningham said.

The donation cut the cost of the project by a little less than half, she said. Butler estimates the lab will cost $596,488 to construct. It will be placed in space currently being used for small classes and tutoring sessions.

Winningham said the lab will start construction in May and be finished by August, just in time for scheduled anatomy and physiology classes in Andover in the fall. In addition to anatomy and physiology classes, the lab will host courses in kinesiology and exercise physiology.

Winningham said students wanting to go into any sort of medical field will make use of the lab – pre-nursing, pre-radiology, pre-sonography, even pre-surgical technology.

Kelly Snedden, Butler’s director of college relations and marketing, said the new lab will significantly relieve pressure on the two existing anatomy and physiology labs at Butler’s El Dorado campus and at its lab in Rose Hill.

“Butler has a really strong anatomy and physiology reputation in the community,” she said. “We have worked hard to make sure those classes meet the needs of other programs. We are just trying to make it better for our students, so they don’t have to fill their gas tanks quite so much.”

The last time Butler constructed a science lab was five years ago, when an anatomy and physiology lab was installed at its campus in Rose Hill.

“When you build a lab, you build it for the long haul, because it’s not something you get to do very often,” Winningham said. “To me, it’s an investment, and you need to invest upfront in what you want it to be in the long run.”

With a few upgrades, Winningham said, the lab could be used as a microbiology lab one day if funds were available.

She plans on staffing one full-time professor who will oversee the lab, another full-time professor who will spend part of his or her time in the lab and then multiple part-time professors to teach in the lab. No new faculty members will be hired, she said; instead, existing staff members will be moved around.

“The faculty have been involved in these blueprints since Day 1, because they live in these labs – they teach in them,” Winningham said. “I want it to be their lab, to be conducive to teaching and learning.”

This story was originally published February 24, 2015 at 12:04 AM with the headline "New science lab at Andover campus will help Butler Community College students."