Bids for the renovation of Boebel Hall are due to UW-Platteville on Wednesday, Oct. 28. The first floor renovation of Boebel Hall will change nine classrooms into labs, including a zoology lab, an ecology lab, a field equipment room and two general biology labs.

While phase I construction covers those nine of the classrooms on the first floor, phase II construction will cover the rest of first floor and the second floor.

Elmo Rawling, department chair of geography, said the labs will have their own prep rooms connected to each lab. The prep rooms will have sinks for lab setup as well as space for undergraduate research.

Rawling cited safety issues as the reason for the renovation, including infrastructure needs and broken fume hoods.

Jeff Huebschman, department chair of biology, said that another reason for the renovation is the increasing number of students using the building.

“We are probably going to continue to grow for the next few years,” Huebschman said. “We are overcrowded and need the space.”

Huebschman said that the prep rooms are essential to the new labs because of the long setup for a lab. He said that sometimes a three-hour lab will take a professor three hours to set up.

“This is going to be a really good thing, and frankly, it’s overdue,” Huebschman said. “We have been getting by with some pretty inadequate labs.”

The field equipment room will hold all of the gear stored for field trips such as the western field trip, ecology landscape field trip, desert ecology field trip and biology field trips. The room will be located where the entrance under the bridge connecting Gardner Hall and Boebel Hall is. The room will enclose the angled wall of the entrance, squaring off the building.

“We are excited to have a central storage area,” Rawling said. “It will be easier to prepare for one of our three-week trips.”