Andrew Crighton
Staff Writer
The ISU Department of Biological Sciences has received a $1.08 million grant from the Idaho Permanent Building Fund to completely renovate and upgrade the anatomy and physiology cadaver lab.
The lab has gone over a complete overhaul, enlarging the lab room, putting in new flooring, new storage shelves and cabinets, increasing cold room storage in addition to adding new heating and cooling systems and new ventilation.
The funding came from the Idaho Permanent Building Fund, which is apportioned by the Permanent Building Fund Advisory Council, and is used for the construction and maintenance of state buildings, including universities.
In the cadaver lab, new floors have been added to increase sanitary conditions; they are much more easily scrubbed and squeegeed in case of fluid spills while students are working in the lab.
Another large upgrade is a new ventilation system.
“The old system had a large metal hood coming down from the ceiling, and the cadaver had to be placed directly under it, which really restricted the movement of students while they were working,” said Mark Austin, chair of the ISU Biological Sciences Department. “The lab seriously needed [the upgrade], it predates my coming here, and is around 25 years old. It’s all exciting, but I think the digital anatomy table is what is most [exciting].”
The digital anatomy table measures 7 feet by 2.3 feet, and is equipped with a full touch sensitive display that allows students to perform virtual dissections.
The table generates a life-size, 3-D model of a cadaver and allows rotation, cross-sections to be taken at any spot, and can show the cadaver at any level from the skin, to the nervous system and everything in between and cost $87,000.
One of the key features is the table’s ability to download digital pathologies, giving students the chance to dissect a cadaver with lung cancer, or any disease when it has been hard to do so in the past.
“We rarely get pathologies. We really just get what the University of Utah has to give us,” said Austin. “It won’t replace cadavers, we still need those, but it does help add to the education we can provide to our students.”
The digital anatomy table was an addition to the upgrades after the renovations to the cadaver lab were completed.
The ISU-Meridian Health Sciences Center received two of these tables, and the Pocatello campus received one in order to keep the education consistent throughout the ISU campuses.
There are around 200 universities across the nation that have tables of this nature, giving ISU some of the same abilities as schools like Stanford.
The digital anatomy table is a university education tool, and is open to all departments at ISU for use.
Programs expected to benefit from it include occupational therapy, physician assistant, dental, and even anthropology.
The upgrades and digital anatomy table in particular, are all also expected to be powerful recruitment tools.
Having over $1 million put into a single lab can really help students feel like the university feels that their college is important.
“It definitely makes it look like the school is encouraging the medical aspect of their school. It’s nice to see that for sure,” said Joshua Christensen, a junior majoring in Medical Lab Sciences.
“[The upgrades give] a better lab experience,” said Christensen. “I can focus more on what we’ve come to learn rather than focusing on outside stuff.
[The ventilation system] is much better; you can hardly smell the preservative at all. Actually the hall smells worse now.”
