The campaign for the Biomedical and Physical Sciences Facility received its latest donation of $250,000 this month.

The Charles J. Strosacker Foundation of Midland donated the grant and will fund the facility’s Collaborative Teaching Laboratory, which will be used by the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Wolfgang Bauer, chairperson of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is very excited about the new building - and what the grant will offer.

“The Strosacker Foundation in particular gave money to a physics computer teaching lab,” Bauer said. “It will be a better help room than we have now.”

Eugene C. Yehle, chairman of the Charles J. Strosacker Foundation, said the lab will be a unique addition to the building.

“In addition to being the first lab of its kind on MSU’s campus, it also will be one of the first of its kind in the nation designed for one-on-one, active learning opportunities in physics,” Yehle said in a prepared statement. “The trustees of the foundation support this effort and innovation and are happy to be able to ensure its existence in the facility.”

Featured in the new facility will be a library, coffee shop, and a remote-controlled telescope station where students can view constellations from the other side of the globe.

Soon to be the largest research complex on campus, the new seven-story, 360,000 square-foot facility will be located at the corner of Wilson Road and Farm Lane, and will connect the Chemistry and Biochemistry Buildings together. The facility, which is halfway through construction, will be completed this time next year.

Bauer said the new building will aid in the over-crowded physics classes. Some students have been forced to take Competency Based Instruction classes because they could not schedule certain courses in.

Competency Based Instruction in physics is a self-paced method of taking a class without attending a scheduled lecture.

“From the student’s side, if you have taken a (physics class) you can tell we are basically popping out of our seams,” Bauer said. “Every class is overfilled - we cannot offer enough (classes) for the engineering students in particular.

“Now they won’t be forced to take CBI classes and there will be seats.”

Of the $93 million total price tag the building will cost, MSU is raising $13.3 million from private sources - about $2 million of which is still left to be raised.

“This is just the beginning,” Bauer said. “Recently we got a grant from the Natural Science Foundation for $2.1 million for information technology research.”

With the connection between the two other science buildings, the new facility will offer an opportunity to work inter-departmentally, said George Leroi, the dean of the College of Natural Sciences.

“It’s going to be the most spectacular structure on campus,” Leroi said. “What is special is that it will promote conductivity - which was done intentionally.

“The new building’s connection to biochemistry and chemistry allows a better flow for students, faculty and research.”

Leroi said the whole idea is for people to gather - in areas such as the new facility’s coffee shop - and discuss ideas.

The new building is one of the newest to be occupied by the College of Natural Science since the 1960s he said.

“This is a once in a century opportunity,” Leroi said.