 Hello friends, I'm Brenda Kelly, Provost and Dean of the College at Gustavus. Welcome to Nobel Hall of Science, our newly expanded and renovated 70 million dollar project. Thanks for being with me today. I'm excited to take you on a tour of this amazing building. We're in the Nobel Hall North Atrium. This is newly expanded space for both visitors, students and faculty alike. It's a great space for informal and formal gatherings with expansive windows and lighting that really make this space inviting. As we look out the north windows, you can see the connection of Nobel Hall with Christ Chapel, which is one of the essential and fundamental features that was envisioned in the campus master plan that was developed in the 1960s. This connection through these spaces emphasizes the importance of faith, science and ethics both on the Gustavus campus and in the broader community and world. Welcome to the steamery. This is one of the places that our students most wanted when we were designing this building. They wanted a space where they could pick up the sandwich before they went to lab or a space where they could pick up a coffee early in the morning before going to class or during their nighttime theater practices. So this is a cafe that serves beverages and food. Very popular are the breakfast sandwiches and the smoothies. This space is crowded, especially between 10 and 1030 every day. There's often a line. So we are excited when this space will be crowded again. Welcome to the second year chemistry lab. Key features of this space include the see-through hoods so students can work in pairs in these hoods. The snorkel allowing for fumes from organic solvents to be sucked up through the snorkel. So you have fewer fumes in the lab overall. And then from this viewpoint an instructor could see all the way across the lab so it's much safer for everybody in the lab because of the sight lines that are present in this space. So this is a modernized version of organic chemistry lab. Many of you may remember the long benches and the long hoods on the edges of labs. This space really allows for a safer environment for organic and inorganic chemistry and a more collaborative space for our students. So we're really excited about this space and I'm excited to show you the next one. Let's go. Welcome to the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Teaching Laboratory. This is a lab that's near and dear to my heart because I was involved in assisting with the design of this lab space when I was a faculty member at Gustavus before becoming provost. Features of this lab include the curved edges on the benchtops allowing for student collaboration so students can work together on analyzing data or working on a project. We also have mobile carts on which we house instruments. So this is a spectrophotometer that's used in many of the laboratories involved in biochemistry. We do have two individuals, a faculty member and a student in this lab space who are conducting a faculty student research collaboration project this summer because we are providing some limited opportunities for those projects to occur. Let's go on to our next space. Welcome to the lighting lab. This space is part of our new Rob and Judy Gardner Laboratory Theater and this is where the magic of lights and sound happens. I don't know anything about how any of this equipment works but I can tell you that it's modern, it's state-of-the-art and fortunately we have a lights and sound designer who is here and does know how to run this equipment. Let's go out on the catwalk so that we can see the theater space. So this theater space is flexible, flexible for our theater students and our dance students for teaching, learning and performance. Right now the chairs are displayed or they're out for a performance type environment because we were just about ready to put on a couple of performances before COVID hit but these chairs can also be stored so that we have the full expanse of space for classes, for teaching and learning in this environment. So we're really excited about this space and it supports our intent towards steam which I'll talk about in a little while. So let's go on to our next space. Continuing with our view of the theater we're now in the bottom half of the space. This is the performance space of the theater. You can see the chairs and then the performance space behind me. Again this space is so flexible for our theater and dance students and our performing arts students but what this space really celebrates is the concept of steam which was one of the themes and concepts for the Nobel project as a whole. Steam stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. What we know is that some of the same skills that are used in science in terms of the technical aspects of science are also used in the arts and some of the creativity that is celebrated in the arts is also utilized by our science students. This space really celebrates the bringing together of the science students and the art students into one venue. Let's head on to our next space. One of the amazing features of this space is instrumentation for our scientific laboratories both teaching and research labs. My colleague Dr. Scott Burr is currently doing a liquid nitrogen fill on our NMR nuclear magnetic resonance. This is an instrument that we use primarily in organic chemistry in both teaching and research that allows us to determine the molecular structure of organic molecules. Also included in this instrument room are liquid chromatography mass spectrometers and gas chromatography experiments and instrumentation that's utilized by all of our research scientists within Nobel Hall. Let's go on to our next laboratory. This is the Peterson Atrium. This is one of the spaces that was highlighted by our students and faculty as a real need for the Nobel Hall of Science project. The Nobel faculty and students requested that we had more lounge spaces and interactive spaces for students and faculty to come together informally for students to work together on projects and for students to work separately on their individual homework assignments or classwork. The space has been renovated with new modern furniture lots of separate spaces for students to accomplish their goals but still holds on to some of the tradition of this building with the ode to Alfred Nobel on the wall. Let's move on to our next space. Welcome to the sedimentology lab. This is one of the spaces within Nobel Hall of Science that highlights the interdisciplinary focus that we placed upon this building. This is a space that's utilized by the geography department, the geology department and the environmental studies program where those disciplines really come together to study connections. I am standing next to something called a stream table. A stream table is a tool that allows students to study river water flow and groundwater flow. So this is a space that can be utilized and a tool that can be utilized by students and faculty alike in both courses and research. Let's move along to our next space. Welcome to the Interpretive Geosciences Teaching Laboratory space. This is another space that highlights the interdisciplinary nature of many of our teaching spaces within this building. The furniture is mobile, it's ADA accessible, and this is an example of a T-search space. It's a space that connects a teaching laboratory space which we're currently in to a research space that's right here. So students can see and visualize what's happening in a research laboratory as they're being taught in a classroom space and can transition easily utilizing shared equipment and shared resources. Let's move on to our next space. We're now standing in the Nobel Hall of Science greenhouse. Although the greenhouse is in the same location, the space has been completely renovated. We now have three different climate controlled spaces within this area. Within those spaces we can control for humidity, air flow, heat, and light depending upon the needs of the plants. We have over 650 different species of plants that we care for within this space. All of those plants have different watering needs and heat and light needs, and with this new space we can adjust for those with the services of our professional staff. Let's move on to our next space. Welcome to the Chester Johnson Geology Museum. This space is a little bit under construction but you can see the amazing display cases that have already been incorporated into this space. In addition, this space is tightly connected with and prominent in the main entrance of the building. The North Atrium sits right above these upper windows so visitors and students alike can view the museum very easily. This is a space that's open to individuals from the campus community and visitors alike and has content and materials that are open to people of all ages. Thank you for joining me on this Nobel Hall of Science tour. I was delighted to show you the key aspects of this amazing building. We look forward to seeing you on campus soon. Gustavus alumni, family and friends, students, faculty and staff, all of you have moved us toward the achievement of our vision to equip our students to act on the great challenges of our time. This building does just that.