And chemistry moves into a sparkling, spacious new lab.
In Jon Runyeon’s advanced anatomy class, the first task he assigns his students is “get to know your cadaver.”
Over the course of spring term, students will undertake the extraordinary task of dissecting a human body, but Runyeon gives them a week to study the outer appearance of the cadaver before performing, as he calls it, “the first cut.”
Working in groups of ten, the students do a visual inspection of the cadaver they will eventually dissect. Much like CSI agents, “they are looking for clues that might tell them something about the person’s last moments of life,” said Runyeon. A dark band across the midsection, for instance, might indicate trauma from a seat belt, which in turn would suggest an auto accident.
Right: Dissecting a cadaver is a remarkable opportunity for UO students. Five cadavers (under plastic sheeting) arrive each spring from OHSU.
“We try to get a vision of what their life might have been like,” he said. “It’s our way of paying respect to that person.”
From there, students develop a plan for dissecting the body region they have been assigned (thorax, skull and so forth).
Eventually, though, they must take up their scalpels and begin the dissection, an act that often involves some hesitation. “Cutting that first inch of tissue might take an hour,” Runyeon has observed. But he assures his students that there’s no wrong way to proceed—except to cut too deep.
Dissecting a cadaver is a remarkable opportunity for UO students. This advanced anatomy class is open to both undergraduate and graduate students who have completed first-year anatomy. Especially for undergraduates, the opportunity is “unheard of,” said Runyeon.
Most universities that offer a dissection course reserve this experience for graduate students or medical students. As a result, UO undergraduates who take this class have an edge when they go on to study medicine, dentistry or physical therapy. “They tell me they are light years ahead of their peers,” said Runyeon.
Five cadavers arrive each spring from the Oregon Health & Science University body program. And now that the cadaver lab has moved into a newly renovated space—loaned to the Department of Human Physiology by the Department of Chemistry—the lab will be able to accommodate eight cadavers in the future.
Inspiring Future Chemists
The new cadaver lab now occupies half the space that once housed the old general chemistry lab in the basement of Klamath Hall. The remaining half of the old lab remains intact, and Mike Haley, chemistry department head, likes to take visitors downstairs to the dark, windowless space to show the relative dark ages of the introductory facilities for chemistry undergraduates.
Indeed, the old (and now unused) chemistry lab, originally built in 1969 and featuring cabinets constructed decades before that, looks like a throwback to the Sputnik era.
“If this is the first lab you see, you’re not going to be inspired to be a chemist,” Haley said.
Haley then takes visitors upstairs to show off, by way of contrast, the new $1.2 million spacious, light-filled chemistry laboratory, which occupies 4,000 square feet on the second floor of Klamath
Besides brand-new glassware, instruments, hoods and safety gear, each workbench also features new Macintosh computers for recording and analyzing results. A wall-mounted wide-screen projector shows target outcomes, such as the correct spectral analysis of a given experiment.
This new second-floor laboratory (shown above) is actually a renovation of additional chemistry lab and office space—more modern than the basement lab, but not configured or outfitted to keep up with increased demand for the general chemistry lab course.
Haley states that previous enrollments in this lower-division lab had to be limited to a total of 660 during any given term, but with the expansion, enrollment leaped to 820 the first term the new space was used (a 25 percent increase), suggesting a pent-up demand for all things science.
The students who take introductory chemistry and organic chemistry are not necessarily chemistry majors. Many students majoring in other sciences, such as molecular biology and human physiology, are required to take chemistry as part of their curriculum.
But Haley hopes the new facility will entice greater numbers of science-minded students to consider chemistry as a major, once they get a feel for the advantages of working in a modern laboratory.
A further enticement: a soon-to-be installed microwave reactor that allows students to conduct reactions in ten minutes that previously might have taken two to three hours to complete.
“The UO will be one of the first schools that makes this technology available in the undergraduate curriculum,” Haley said.
—Lisa Raleigh
study by UO economists, released just before the Rose Bowl, has been picked up by the media far and wide.