![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220420_Campus_0017-900x600.webp\")
Paul Butler<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Title<\/strong>: Custodian with Facility Services The piece of cleaning equipment that Paul Butler was maneuvering around a Bonney Science Center lab on Feb. 10 is officially called the \u201cTomcat Sport V2.0 Premium Walk-Behind Scrubber.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In simpler terms, it’s a lean, mean, cleaning machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Butler is one of three custodians who work in Bonney Science Center, where he and the Tomcat do regular deep cleans of the floors. Here, he\u2019s tending to the floor in a research lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Work is work, but truth be told, using the Tomcat is kinda rewarding, says his colleague David Hascom. \u201cIt does all the work, like a snowblower. You just walk behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Butler says that Bates didn\u2019t skimp when it came to outfitting the custodial staff with the tools they need to keep Bonney clean \u2014 one Tomcat runs about $7,600.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe college equipped us with really good, top of the line equipment,\u201d Butler says, which makes it easier to do what he does \u2014 \u201cmake the building shine. The students and professors as well as other staff who work here have a right to be proud of the building we all call home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where most people would see a floor, David and his co-workers see the tiles. Where most people see a nice shine, David and his co-workers spot the scratch or scuff. \u201cOur workload consists of way more detailed work than most realize. So we tend to see things that others normally wouldn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The improvement that Bonney delivers to the work of faculty and staff can be measured in time saved and tasks easier to do. \u201cWe\u2019re able to wash three to four times more supplies than compared to washing them by hand in Carnegie Science Hall,\u201d Butler says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Literally, it\u2019s no sweat to work in a building with ample space for storage and a finely tuned HVAC system. \u201cWe were so cramped\u201d in the old vivarium, which was the home of zebrafish on the fifth floor of Carnegie. (Zebrafish are a powerful model organism in biological research.) \u201cIt was very warm in the summer months. The fish were happy, but we were extremely warm.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Title<\/strong>: Science Resource Manager Sonya Locke\u2019s job as science resource manager runs hot and cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the hot side of Locke\u2019s job is overseeing the sterilization of lab equipment. Most labs sterilize by \u201cautoclaving,\u201d which means using pressurized steam. Bonney\u2019s sterilizer is in a second-floor room along with a commercial dishwasher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unit is the Amsco 250LS sterilizer, specifically designed for life-science labs (you can pick one up for about the price of a new Ford F-150 truck.) It generates steam heat up to 285 degrees Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Locke\u2019s daily duties is to clean the unit\u2019s circular drain strainer. It’s small, just an inch and a half tall and just a half-inch in diameter, but vital. Like the strainers on your washing machine, if it\u2019s clogged, nothing gets cleaned. \u201cThe sterilizer would not function,\u201d Locke says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although her office is now in Bonney, Locke still works with colleagues in Carnegie Science Hall and spends time in those spaces. (Some biology faculty have retained offices and lab spaces in Carnegie.) Which led to the cold part of Locke\u2019s job, when she spent time at her office computer reviewing photographs of materials in the cold room, located in Carnegie, which serves the natural sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like a walk-in refrigerator, a cold room is used to store large amounts of perishable materials used in research, such as samples of lake water, and used for procedures that need to be carried out in the cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than standing in a cold room examining what\u2019s there, Locke takes a smart approach, snapping photos that she examines back in the comfort of her Bonney office. Here, Locke has identified some containers with old contents that need to be disposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tending to small things \u2014 like that strainer \u2014 to keep bigger things running smoothly is a metaphor, says Locke. \u201cI think about the parallels that can be drawn from this act to the day-to-day routines and workings of our lives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Title<\/strong>: Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Bonney is fully equipped to support faculty and students as they collaborate to investigate and untangle scientific mysteries. And it\u2019s set up for the newbies, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Sommer, a visiting assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, taught a section of Chemistry 108 over the winter. With labs and lectures, the course is as core a course can get: It looks at fundamental concepts underlying the structure and behavior of matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a class session in a first-floor classroom on Feb. 2, Matthew Kijowski \u201925 of New York City approached his professor, laptop in hand, to ask a question. \u201cHe was asking about a particular lecture slide that was pertinent to the problems we were working on in class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Sommer taught Chem 108 last year, the lab and lectures were in Dana Chemistry Hall, whose teaching spaces were designed during the sage-on-a-stage era of the 1960s, when tiered seating and tiny arm desks, all facing forward, were the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, the session that Sommer was leading in Bonney in February was a lecture in name only. He moved freely about, checking in with students working together at tables whose placement around the room is delightfully random. (All the tables and chairs have casters, so they’re easily moved.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a course about chemistry fundamentals, Sommer was teaching the fundamentals of thinking like a chemist. A few minutes before helping Kijowski, he stopped by a desk to help another first-year student, Molly Kelley of South Orange, N.J. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was explaining the problem-solving strategy necessary for the types of questions we were working on,\u201d he explains. \u201cThere are several steps needed to set up the solution, and I was describing the logical flow of these steps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The open floor plan is \u201cthe best part of the room,\u201d he says. \u201cThe tables make it easier for students to work together. The expanse of table space created “plenty of room for papers, books, and laptops.\u201d In turn, that means that “more students bring their laptops to class in this room than they used to in Dana. That gives them easy access to the lecture slides I post, which is very handy when they are doing worksheets because they can refer back to the notes easily.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Classroom technology is always cool. But even better is classroom technology that gets used, like the multiple display screens. \u201cIt\u2019s nice that you can display different things on each of the six computer screens.\u201d And if Sommer puts the same visual on each screen, that\u2019s great, too. “A student can see what’s projected no matter which way they face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our fourth installment in a series that profiles, in images and words, each and every resident of Bates\u2019 newest academic building, Bonney Science Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":145942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14,217,11009],"tags":[12283,11942],"class_list":["post-145940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","category-science-technology","category-the-college","tag-bonney-places-and-faces","tag-bonney-science-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145940"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146114,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145940\/revisions\/146114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Joined Bates<\/strong>: 2018
Date Photographed<\/strong>: Feb. 10, 2022
He says<\/strong>: \u201cWe tend to see things that others normally wouldn’t.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220210_Bonney_Paul_Butler_Lobby_Lab_0090_3000.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220210_Bonney_Paul_Butler_Lobby_Lab_0276_3000.webp\")
\n\n\n\nSonya Locke <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Joined Bates<\/strong>: 2002
Date Photographed<\/strong>: Feb. 2, 2022, and Feb. 23, 2022
She says<\/strong>: \u201cI think about the parallels that can be drawn to the workings of our lives.”\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220202_Bonney_Sonya_Locke_Autoclave_0094_3000.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220223_Bonney_Sonya_Locke_Office_Autoclave_0044_3000.webp\")
\n\n\n\nMichael Sommer <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Joined Bates<\/strong>: 2019
Date Photographed<\/strong>: Feb. 2, 2022
He says<\/strong>: “A student can see what’s projected no matter which way they face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220202_Bonney_Michael_Sommer_Chemistry_0409_3000.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/04\/220202_Bonney_Michael_Sommer_Chemistry_0352_3000A.webp\")