With the rapid growth Iowa State is currently experiencing, changes are being made around campus to accommodate not only students but also professors.

One such change is the new addition currently underway for Bessey Hall’s east wing, a project that will hopefully add space and functionality for the students of bio sciences.

“This has been in the planning process for several years, and one of things that had been identified is that it would be good to add so that we would have a central focus for the undergraduate bio sciences teachings,” said Associate Provost Dave Holger, co-chair of the biosciences facilities planning effort.

Problems have arisen with Bessey Hall as there is currently not enough room for many of the introductory science labs, leaving some of the basic biology labs running from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

After the addition, Bessey Hall will grow by 64,000 square feet of space and receive several basic biology labs, new classrooms, faculty and graduate student offices and research laboratories.

“This will hopefully make Bessey even more of the focal point for undergraduate biology teachings than it already is,” Holger said.

The current estimate for the addition is slated at $22 million and production will start this week with fences constructed around Bessey and will be finished by March 2017.

Rohrbach Associates PC, whose work includes the College of Public Health at Iowa as well as the Thielen Student Health Center and Oak-Elm residence designs, will be the architects for the project.

Along with the additions to Bessey, construction on a new building will begin around the same time.

“The Advanced Teaching and Research building is on the old industrial education II site,” said Mark Grief, project manager for the Bessey Hall addition and the Advanced Teaching and Research Building. “We demolished the site, and you’ll start to [see] that construction begin immediately.”

Functioning similarly to Bessey, the project is currently on the same project time line but has an opposite educational purpose.

“It’s more for upper-level classes,” Grief said. “There are two teaching labs that are primarily GDCB. It would be on the graduate student level, and the plant pathology offices are located in this building along with labs and space for future research.”

Grief and Holger do not expect complications or major problems regarding transportation at or around the Bessey site.

“The pedestrian access on the east end of Bessey Hall will be limited to the east side of Farmhouse Lane,” Grief said. “You’ll start to see trailers and some grubbing and then slowly into a full-on construction site.”

Looking ahead, Holger sees construction of new sites as a necessary evil for managing the growing population.

“You look at the Marston Hall renovation,” Holger said. “At the moment, it’s a bit of pain but in a year, it’s going to be really nice. Space is the toughest thing to deal with in terms of growing enrollment because it takes the longest to address. You can say that [you want to] hire 100 faculty this year and you could probably do that in a year, but if you [want to] create a building for those people, it’s [going to] take much longer.”