Students have been exploring the latest addition to the campus skyline this semester as Texas A&M University marks the completion of its state-of-the-art Instructional Laboratory & Innovative Learning Building (ILSQ).
The five-story, 140,000-square-foot facility on the edge of West Campus officially opened its doors at the start of the spring 2023 semester as a companion to nearby Innovative Learning Classroom Building (ILCB), providing new hands-on learning spaces for chemists, artists and creators of all kinds.
Faculty and staff from the Department of Chemistry played key roles in the programming and planning of the ILSQ, which took roughly $100 million and just over two years of construction to complete and is a showcase for undergraduate chemistry teaching laboratories, from general chemistry to organic chemistry.
"Ed Lee and Amber Schaefer, along with Ron Carter, deserve all the credit for designing the new lab spaces and orchestrating the move to West Campus," said Joanna Goodey-Pellois, instructional associate professor of chemistry and director of the First Year Program in Chemistry.
Simon W. North, John W. Bevan Professor of Chemistry and head of Texas A&M Chemistry, said the early work on making the pitch, getting the building approved and developing the programmatic vision dates back to approximately June 2018.
"There are many people who deserve credit for making this happen," North added. "Associate department head Tim Hughbanks and I were there from the beginning, along with Ed and Amber, who both worked hard to make sure the lab designs were good. [Former Texas A&M Provost and chemist] Carol Fierke really deserves some credit for being a champion, and of course, [assistant department head] Ron Carter was critical, along with the Provost Office's Joe Pettibon and Cheryl Hanks, who were very important."
The ILSQ is expected to serve more than 15,000 students annually, primarily freshmen and sophomore students across a host of majors and degree programs in multiple Texas A&M schools and colleges.
"The chemistry labs in the ILSQ will provide a first-class gateway experience for students pursuing degrees in agriculture, engineering, veterinary medicine, medicine, science and geosciences," Lee said. "We have intentionally designed collaborative laboratory learning spaces that will encourage freshmen and sophomores from across the disciplines to work together in ways that they might not have had the opportunity to take advantage of before."
Take a look inside to find out what makes this sprawling new facility that merges interdisciplinary makerspaces with science facilities in order to encourage interdisciplinary and creative problem-solving and design-thinking methodologies such an exciting part of A&M’s growing campus.
The ILSQ building stands on the west side of Wellborn Road, directly across the railroad tracks from its sister facility, ILCB, which opened its doors to students in 2020.
The newly-unveiled lab building is the latest in a series of additions to A&M’s West Campus, which celebrated the opening of a new dining facility early last year and will soon welcome construction of the Aplin Center, a facility dedicated to programs in hospitality, retail studies and food product development.
The second floor features spacious studios for both physical and digital art, as well as additional general chemistry labs.
Throughout the building, the walls are decorated with art pieces showcasing the beauty of chemistry, from artistically composed shots of lab equipment, to colorful diagrams showing the molecular structure of common food and flavor compounds like lactose and menthol.
This story was originally published by Texas A&M Today.
See additional building photographs and information about the facility and its many features, courtesy of the design architect, Ayers Saint Gross.