Whitmore Lab’s New Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) in Action

As part of the recent $34M renovation of Whitmore Lab a new Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) was added to the first floor. The MPR is ~1300 square feet in size. It has a flexible design which enables it to function as a space for lab lectures, projects, and prep work.  The desks in this room have wheels, are height adjustable, and they have the same resin tops as lab benches.  As a result, the MPR can quickly be changed between a variety of formats.  A $300k broadcast system makes it possibly to deliver lab lectures and equipment demonstrations to any of the ten teaching labs on the first floor of Whitmore, and in principle, to anywhere in the world.

In one of the photos below, Dr. Kyle Schmid delivers a Chem 111 lab lecture in the MPR which was broadcast live to nine other labs (10/5/16).  Within 15 minutes of the completion of Kyle’s lecture, the MPR was reconfigured, and John DeCaro was at work on his Honor’s thesis project (photo below).

We expect the MPR to support a wide variety of lab activities in the years to come.