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A look at the complex role of the vivarium as both research and training facility and some guidelines for designing best-fit vivaria for higher education.
The vivarium plays a complex and essential role in higher education. Changes in research methodologies and culture as well as advances in our understanding of how people learn are necessarily changing best practices in science education. This transformation is especially visible on the undergraduate level, where the shift to discovery-based pedagogies requires colleges and universities to invest in flexible facilities that support hands-on, collaborative research opportunities across traditional disciplinary lines. The vivarium is a critical component of such a learning environment, but one whose design presents particular challenges for institution and architect.
Research Environment
Vivaria are central to research in the life sciences. Even in this age of cell and tissue culturing, biochemical tests, and computer simulations, nothing explains the complex processes that occur in living creatures better than animal research subjects. Laboratory research animals have been the vital biological models behind medical advances ranging from insulin, antibiotics, and the Salk vaccine to medical technologies, including CAT scans and medicated stents, to surgical techniques for heart bypass and organ transplant surgery. As nanotechnology enables researchers to work on the cellular level, the vivarium remains essential to the research landscape— and increasingly, to the teaching environment.
Learning Environment
Fiscal and space constraints mean that college and university vivaria are considerably smaller in scale than their research and industry counterparts, yet they are subject to the same rigorous oversight and accreditation requirements. Why? College vivaria are working facilities that support science faculty research; they are a recruitment tool as well as a means of professional advancement for academic scientists. College vivaria also function as learning environments.
Today’s students learn about science by doing science. Working in a fully operational vivarium teaches students about the life sciences, introduces a range of career opportunities in science research, and instills the discipline of research and safety protocols as well as ethical awareness of the use of animals as research subjects. While campus vivaria advance any number of scientific inquiries and investigations, these specialized laboratories are also cultivating the next generation of researchers.
Global Competition in the Sciences
Globalization is increasing the speed at which science advances and the ways in which researchers collaborate. At the same time, intellectual and financial competition, especially related to medical applications and devices, is on the rise.With our students ranking poorly in math and sciences among first-world nations, the United States now faces additional competition from third-world countries that embrace science as an economic engine and clear path to a global presence. Nanobiotechnology, regenerative medicine, personalized medicine—these evolving fields are triggering a boom in the business of the life sciences and medical applications.
Our success as a nation depends in large part on our ability to engage the next generation with science. Science literacy is no longer enough. Our students must develop the ability to think broadly, adaptively, and quickly across the blurring boundaries of traditional disciplines. In addition to enabling them to participate in research and publication opportunities, getting a taste of possible career options, original research projects provide students with ample opportunities to develop skills in intellectual improvisation that will serve them well in every field.
New Pedagogies
Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) is an informal alliance in the United States that advocates building and sustaining effective undergraduate programs in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Designing learning environments that support hands-on, collaborative pedagogies is critical to attracting undergraduates to the increasingly important STEM fields and to fast-tracking their readiness for careers in research and industry. From freshman coursework to their senior projects, today’s college students are exposed to real science and related protocols in research laboratories governed by the same rigorous controls as those in the for-profit sector. Hands-on science engages the brain on more than one level, bringing the same lesson home through different senses and pathways. This integrated approach develops pro-activity and critical big-picture thinking skills that enable the effective intellectual improvisations of inquiry, experimentation, and discovery.