Funds for a new $220 million Biology Teaching and Research Building, or BTRB, were approved by the Texas A&M Board of Regents on Aug. 28.
The BTRB is set to open in 2029 and will be located on Lubbock Street — directly across from the front entrance of Heldenfels Hall, where the Engineering Activities Buildings are located.
“Biology students right now don’t have a place to call home,” Deb Bell-Pedersen, Ph.D., said. “We’re spread out in many different places. The first floor of this building will really provide that vision that we have for … [biology students] where they can run into their faculty … and be able to connect with us.”
Bell-Pedersen is a distinguished professor of biology who has been instrumental in advocating and planning for the new building.
The first of four floors will have classrooms, faculty and advising offices, study areas and a cafe.
The style of classrooms will vary, with a large circular lecture hall and other specialized smaller lecture halls with interactive learning, such as seating setups that allow students to move around and collaborate with peers. The second through fourth floors will host modern research labs with cutting-edge technology.
Some labs will have virtual reality simulations, a technology that no other department at A&M has utilized, according to Bell-Pedersen.
Many labs will also have walls made of glass to allow viewers to observe research happening in the labs.
“They’ll be able to see actually what’s going on in the research laboratory,” Bell-Pedersen said. “Then we can also see … if there are people that are interested, maybe they’d like to come in and hear more about what we’re doing.”
The last time the biology department got a new building was when Heldenfels was built in 1977 — which now also holds math and engineering courses.
Alex Keene, Ph.D., professor and biology department head, credits Timothy Hall — head of A&M’s biology department from 1984-1992 — as the original visionary for building research within the department and advocating for new facilities.
“You just can’t give the same level of education to students if you don’t have active researchers,” Keene said. “He basically spent his time as the department head reenvisioning the department as a really active research department.”
Hall’s leadership pushed the department toward acquiring new facilities for teaching and research, according to Keene.
“I would say, at least four times, there has been a promise of a new building, and that has always fallen apart in the end,” Bell-Pedersen said.
The department was able to gain support for a new building through the presidential terms of Mike Young and John Junkins. When former A&M President Katherine Banks took office in July 2021, she cut the funds for the building and reallocated them to a new building for the College of Veterinary Medicine. However, when former A&M President Mark A. Welsh III took office in July 2023, he immediately made a new biology building an infrastructure priority, Bell-Pedersen said.
“I think they didn’t take the time to investigate the current conditions of our buildings and the needs that we have to continue to grow,” Bell-Pedersen said.
The biology department serves over 20,000 students each year, including over 2,000 undergraduate biology students. According to Keene, the department has been facing significant infrastructure issues, including constant leaks coming through the ceiling in the basement of the Biological Sciences Building West, or BSBW, where the department keeps expensive pieces of equipment — including one microscope valued at $800,000.
The BSBW is not the only building with biology labs whose outdated facilities have disrupted research, according to students.
“Last fall, I was taking chordate anatomy and we were in the basement of Butler [Hall],” zoology senior Sally Bounds said. “We had to move labs to Heldenfels because the prep room with all the organisms got infested with mold, and it wasn’t safe for us to be in the lab.”
The team that helped develop plans for the BTRB looked to buildings around A&M’s campus, like the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building and Instructional Laboratory & Innovative Learning Building, as well as from other universities like the Bioscience Research Laboratories at the University of Arizona, for inspiration for modern labs that will be able to support sophisticated research.
“A number of times over the history of the last 30 to 40 years people have envisioned a new biology building for Texas A&M,” Mark Zoran, Ph.D., biology professor and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences said. “Now that we can see it in the future, I’m gonna make sure that it happens this time.”
