Facilities

University scientists established the first center in the United States to monitor changes in levels of ultraviolet light. The National UV-B Monitoring Center, funded by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, measures the amount of UV light striking the earth’s surface and its effect on people, plants and ecosystems. Primarily produced by the sun, UV light is a form of radiation that can damage human health and plant and marine life.

UGA’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies is one of a few places in the country where a research machine called an accelerator mass spectrometer is located. The spectrometer, which allows scientists to obtain precise measurements from extremely small samples, is used primarily to count the number of carbon-14 atoms in a chemical or biological sample. Carbon-14 dating is critical for research in environmental pollution, drug therapy and fields such as geology, hydrology and oceanography.

UGA’s $43 million Student Learning Center, located in the heart of campus, is one of the largest and most technologically advanced facilities of its kind on an American university campus. The 206,000-square-foot building, on a 6.5-acre footprint, contains 26 classrooms with a total of 2,200 seats, and 96 small study rooms. An electronic library allows users to electronically access materials in other university libraries. The building has 500 public-access computers, and many classrooms and study rooms have laptop connections, including wireless. The building also has a coffee shop and reading room.

The Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences opened in 2006. The 200,000-square-foot, $40 million facility — named for the late senior U.S. senator from Georgia — provides space for faculty to conduct research in such areas as biomedicine, agriculture, ecology and environmental sciences, and is the home of UGA’s Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute. The U.S. Congress and the Georgia General Assembly each provided $10 million for the building, and UGA raised $20 million from other sources.

The University’s 257,000-square-foot Fred C. Davison Life Sciences Complex provides state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for the University’s biotechnology program. Scientists in genetics and biochemistry conduct research in recombinant DNA, molecular biology, gene-splicing and other areas of genetic engineering.

The 425,000-square-foot Bernard B. and Eugenia A. Ramsey Student Center for Physical Activities is one of the largest and most comprehensive fitness/exercise facilities for students and faculty in the country, and has been rated by Sports Illustrated as the nation’s best such facility. Covering some 5 ½ acres, the Ramsey Student Center contains gymnasia, recreational and competition swimming pools, racquetball courts, a volleyball gymnasium, weight training rooms, dance studios and concert seating. It also contains classrooms, research labs and administrative and faculty offices for the School of Health and Human Performance.

UGA’s Performing and Visual Arts Complex provides some of the finest facilities in the South for teaching, research and performance in the fine arts. The Complex includes the Hodgson School of Music; the Performing Arts Center, which has a 1,100-seat auditorium for major concerts and musical performances; the Lamar Dodd School of Art, which opened in 2008 and includes studios, lecture halls, galleries, a media center and an eco-friendly “green roof;” and the Georgia Museum of Art with 9,000 square feet of exhibition space.

East Campus Village, a complex of four student residence halls and associated amenities located on East Campus near the Ramsey Center for Physical Activities, provides housing for 1,200 students. Living spaces are fully furnished suites with two or four private bedrooms, kitchens, one or two bathrooms and a common room. A dining hall, commissary, bookstore and an 850-vehicle parking deck are part of the complex.

The Founders’ Memorial Garden on the University campus commemorates the founding in Athens of the first garden club in America.

The Animal Health Research Center, a facility of the College of Veterinary Medicine, provides scientists, including researchers from private biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment to conduct basic and applied research on vaccines, diagnostic tests and treatments for diseases that infect animals and humans. The facility will play a key role in efforts to make Georgia a center for biomedical research involving viral diseases that are major public health threats.

The University is home to the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, the State Museum of Art and the State Museum of Natural History. The Georgia General Assembly designated the University’s Botanical Garden the State Botanical Garden in 1984. The 312-acre forest south of the main campus features a 20,000-square-foot conservatory/visitor’s center that contains tropical and semi-tropical plants. The General Assembly designated the Georgia Museum of Art the State Museum of Art in 1982. Founded in 1945, the museum has a permanent collection of more than 9,000 works with primary focus on American artists. The General Assembly in 1999 designated the Museum of Natural History as the State of Georgia Museum of Natural History. Housed in several departments, the museum is composed of collections of arthropods, plants, rocks, snakes, fish, invertebrates, mammals, fungi, birds, pollen and plant microspores and contains more than 4,500,000 specimens.

The Complex Carbohydrate Research Center was created in 1985 as the first facility in the world devoted specifically to the study of complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates play key roles in regulating growth, development, cellular communication, gene expression and disease resistance in microbes, plants and animals. Because they help give shape to cells and organs, complex carbohydrates can play an important role in human diseases. The CCRC is home for three federally designated centers for carbohydrate research, and is a Georgia Research Alliance-supported regional center for nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. With about $6.8 million annually in research awards, the CCRC is one of UGA’s largest research units in terms of funding. The Center’s 135,000-square-foot building, which opened in February 2004, is the third expansion of the CCRC since it relocated to UGA from Colorado in 1985. The facility includes fermentation and cell culture rooms and equipment to support medical glycoscience research; labs for plant growth and plant tissue culture research; laboratories for analytical services and training; and a suite for a 900 megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, the most powerful machine of its kind in existence and one of only a few such machines in the world.

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