The Greenhouse
The Biology Department Greenhouse facility includes a 30' by 21' greenhouse
with an attached classroom/laboratory. It also has a 20' by 20'
slat house for plant propigation during the warm seasons.
The Department maintains an extensive collecting of living plants
representing a variety of Families and over 100 genera. The facility
is used by students in botany and ecology classes.
John and Martha Ayers Science Field Station
The John and Martha Ayers Science Field Station is a 140 acre facility
located 3.8 miles north of campus. This station has been named in
memory of the late John Ayers, Biology Department Head for many
years. . Several Biology courses including, BIO 370 Ecology, BIO
309 Vertebrate Natural History, BIO 215 Survey of the Plant Kingdom,
BIO 311 Invertebrate Zoology, BIO 365 Environmental Law, Policy
and BIO 399 Ornithology, use field experience as a significant portion
of their labs. The Field station provides a fitting facility to
allow for ongoing class and research projects. With the completion
of the Observatory during the fall of 2001, SCI 103 and SCI 310 have been using this facility.
In addition to these specific courses which are making regular use
of the Field Station, the Physics Department has scheduled area
astronomy groups to come and use the Observatory. The Biology Department
is able to store much of their field equipment (nets, traps, boots,
etc.) in secure storage rooms at the field station, making it unnecessary
to hall equipment back and forth from campus.
Click here for a larger view
Observatory
An observatory is a facility that promotes the direct observation
of stars/galaxies. The GC observatory is located about two miles
north of the campus at 1348 Ayres Rd. in a rather "dark"
sky environment.
The observatory has three parts. The first is external to a building
so that smaller,computer controlled telescopes can be set on a long
table and aligned. Once aligned the telescope can be programmed
to locate virtually any position in the sky.
The other two parts of the observatory are located in a 20 x 40
building which the faculty in the science/math division completed.
The building has a split roof so that the upper roof may be retracted
over the lower fixed roof thereby exposing two larger telescopes
to the sky . Under the fixed roof is a classroom containing also
an electric heater and a hot chocolate table ! While this observatory
is small ,compared to say that operated by alumnus Dr. Robert Joseph
for NASA on Maunea Kea, it nevertheless provides students with some
excellent viewing of this corner of the universe.
The observatory is operated by the physics dept to support the two
classes SCI 103 --Earth and Space Science ( Intro. to Astronomy) and SCI 310 — Astronomy.
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