Pope Science Building Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Ground was broken in August 2010 for the building, designed by GSBS Architects and built by Big-D Construction. The facility provides students, faculty and staff with much-needed breathing room that includes 27 laboratory classrooms, 18 lecture rooms, 12 research laboratories, a rooftop greenhouse and a 400-seat auditorium, the largest on campus. There are also 57 offices for faculty and staff, small seminar rooms to facilitate group discussions and spaces for cross-disciplinary collaborations.
The debut of the building marks a new era in science and health education for UVU, whose internationally-respected faculty and staff include Steve Wasserbaech, a physicist with an appointment at the famous CERN lab in Geneva, Switzerland, and Ruhul Kuddus, a biologist who has a Fulbright Scholar grant at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.
The College offers associate, baccalaureate and master degrees in a wide range of programs, including biology, chemistry, dental hygiene, earth science, exercise and outdoor recreation, mathematics, nursing, physics and public and community health.
Donors Marc and Debbie Bingham gave the project a significant boost by offering to match up to $1 million toward donations made by other supporters to the College of Science & Health. Their $1 million gift resulted in hundreds of additional private donations. During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, busts of the Binghams, sculpted by Daniel Fairbanks, associate dean of the College of Science & Health, were unveiled to recognize the couple for their contribution. Debbie Bingham is chair of the UVU Foundation and also sits on the UVU Board of Trustees.
The occasion was also marked by several scholarly lectures on campus, including that of the renowned Valerie Hu, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at The George Washington University Medical Center, who visited campus as part of the Presidential Lecture Series and the UVU Conference on Autism. Also presenting were Fairbanks and Erin D. Bigler, a renowned brain researcher with expertise in autism and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at BYU.
Apart from the ribbon-cutting, guests to the grand opening enjoyed free refreshments provided by Sub Zero Ice Cream, student exhibits, science demonstrations by UVU science clubs and a UVU jazz combo performance.