You are there: Step into the Life Sciences Building

With state-of-the-art laboratory and classroom spaces, offices, a greenhouse, study areas, big windows and numerous environmental pluses, the new Life Sciences Building is a defining feature of the WSU Vancouver Campus. But even its marvelous functionality isn’t simply useful. The Life Sciences Building was made to welcome, engage and inspire.

How do you tell the story of such a place? Description doesn’t do it justice. Christine Portfors, vice chancellor for research and graduate education, wanted visitors and prospective students to have a “you are there” experience of it.

Portfors remembers learning something important from her daughter, Cat, a high school senior. Cat said the usual campus tour—a walk around campus looking at buildings and hearing about majors and programs—isn’t what high school students need. “They don’t know the difference between a high school lab and a college lab,” Cat told her. “We should get people into classes. Is there a way you could see virtually what people are doing in a lab class?”

That gave Portfors an idea that the Life Sciences Building and all that happens there could attract students to the campus. But they would need a feel for the in-person environment, the sense of place, the airiness and light, the interactions with other students and teachers—things that matter for learning and career development.

Seeking advice, Portfors met with Dene Grigar, professor and director of WSU Vancouver’s Department of Digital Technology and Culture. Grigar recognized that Portfors’s wish would translate beautifully into a class project for her senior seminar, DTC 497, in spring 2025.

Each semester the seminar takes on a demanding project in which students can use all the digital tools and knowledge they’ve been learning in class, as well as gain experience working with a client. In past years, they’ve created a mobile app using augmented reality to reimagine Vancouver parks; restored Thomas Disch’s 1986 adventure game “Amnesia” so it could be played on today’s computers; built “Project Renovate,” a website and virtual experience for the Clark County Historical Museum; and many others.

Grigar saw that the Life Sciences project had immense potential. While Portfors served as the client, Grigar organized the 24 students in the course into teams: Web coders, designers, 3D modelers, videographers, social media experts and a project manager. Over 3,000 hours this spring, they created SciVite, for Science Virtual Interactive Experience. It features four 360-degree interactive videos of the building’s first and second floors, including laboratories with students working, talking and laughing; an interactive timeline of the building’s creation; a 3D model of a lab; a documentary video about the building’s development; interviews with students and staff; and a closeup look at a zebrafish laboratory—just one example of the research that happens in the building.

The first step was to give the team five descriptor words—Portfors said welcoming, collaborative, sustainable, flexible and wellness. Those words go onto a mood board, with images representing them. The mood board inspires the logo, icons, color palette and typography. Photos, videos, 3D models, interviews, layout, navigation—all the parts of the puzzle are designed to convey the feeling of the five descriptors. The team used social media to highlight their progress and help build excitement for the unveiling.

Three concepts help organize the site: Spaces, including the 360-degree experience; Faces, for those who work and study in the building; and Paces, focusing on degrees, programs and news related to the building. Prospective students can even apply for admission from the site.

Besides the student teams, four people formed an executive committee supervising the development: the professor, Grigar; project manager Autumn Sterle; CMDC staff Holly Slocum and Greg Philbrook; and assistant for the teaching labs Ryan Watson.

Portfors and Grigar (not to mention the 100 people who came to see the final presentation) were thrilled with the outcome. “You feel immediately you’re welcome,” Grigar said.

In exit interviews with students on the team, Grigar asked what they’d learned they hadn’t expected. Among other things, they mentioned collaboration, budgeting and working with a client. “They got to work with people they don’t usually cross paths with, and they loved it,” Slocum said. “The sharing of knowledge across departments and relationship building and bridge building was so cool.”

Gunjan Gakhar, an associate professor who teaches in the building, recalls asking an electrical engineering student why he had enrolled in one of her biology classes. He replied, “I wanted to experience this building.”