Williamson County Science Building
The first Science Center on campus was symbolic of the tension between science and religion in the early years of Southwestern.
The Williamson County Science Building was the first Sceince Center on campus. It was eventually demolished and replaced by Fondren-Jones Science Hall at a different location, but for thirty years, it evolved quickly in response to Southwestern’s involvement in the two World Wars while revealing an underlying tension between science and religion at a faith-based college.
Plans for the Williamson County Science Building (WCSB) were first recorded in the minutes and reports of the 1916 meeting of the SU Board of Trustees, detailing contracts for construction and installation. The report concludes with a thank you to the men and women of Williamson County for their self-sacrifice in making construction possible. Construction was completed in 1917, and the WCSB was state of the art for the time. Original layout plans included 3 floors, with the first floor dedicated to Physics, the second being built for biology and genetics, lastly the third floor designed for chemistry labs.
I was surprised to see that the second floor included a museum. It is most likely that this mode allowed the students to engage with a more interactive way of learning. Enacting the process of the WCSB, specifically garnering funds (valued at nearly $1.3 Million today), was a community effort, but what is it about a university science building that drew in the residents of Williamson County to help with their plan even though it was mainly designed to serve the University? The need for a building on campus specifically for students in science-related fields grew strong in response to demands for technological innovation and scientific training during World War I. WCSB was not only a matter of improving Southwestern, but also answering the call of the nation.
As the saying goes “history repeats itself,” and throughout the 1940s Southwestern witnessed a resurgence in stressing the importance of science-related courses in response to wartime needs in World War II. Notable differences on the campus during this time included the installment of a V-12 Navy Program, and along with this installment came a list of demands from the Navy. The list of demands included refurbishment of the WCSB and some required courses, with most of the courses geared towards chemistry and engineering.
Although the WCSB had provided the genesis for the SU standard of science disciplines, Southwestern is an ever-changing campus which grows more and more each year, and in 1948 The Williamson County Science Building was demolished.
Along with the demolition of the WCSB came the unveiling of the cornerstone of the original foundation of the building. In many older buildings the cornerstone of a building would be laid down and filled with items chosen to reflect the values and culture of the time, essentially like a time capsule. The cornerstone of the WCSB held copies of local newspapers, the weekly Southwestern newsletter, a copy of The Megaphone, a copy of the Christian Bible with the Old and New Testament, the Methodist Hymnal, and an instruction manual for clergy.
Southwestern University was founded as a Methodist university so it makes sense overall for a SU building to have such items in its capsule, but it seems strange to me that there were so many religious items included in the time capsule of a science building.
The aforementioned early periods of the 20th century were a time of great innovation and advancement and are integral to the development of Southwestern's science courses. Providing a space for science faculty and students to gather and discuss ideas (and question old ideas or what has been ‘accepted’ as fact) facilitated the growth of success within the sciences, as buildings serve as grounds for socialization and claiming space. While Southwestern was founded in association with the Methodist church, the University holds a more vague reflection of these values in the current day.
Advancements in technology and medicine are a direct result of questioning your predecessors and yourself to see what could be done or thought about differently. Before the war effort trickled down to Georgetown, did a culture of questioning what was thought to be true exist? Did the change of teaching and learning science at a collegiate level demanded by the affairs of the nation result in a gradual shift of the University’s mission? By understanding how the evolution of teaching science at Southwestern unfolded, we can begin to understand the success garnered by the Fondren-Jones Science center today and see where it will take the students of the future.
Images
