10 Things to Do in Lincoln and Edmunds  

The College’s newest pair of academic buildings were dedicated in the spring, and today the Lincoln and Edmunds buildings bustle with activity. Encompassing a combined 92,000 square feet, Lincoln and Edmunds house departments ranging from Psychology to Geology and provide space for a wide range of research and other pursuits—some of them a tad surprising—as you’ll see in our list of 10 things for students to do there:

1. Spit. Whoa. Let us explain. The Psychology Department’s new space includes a Saliva Room, to be used by Professors Nicole Weekes’ and Richard Lewis’ students to gather saliva samples for research on how examination stress influences health, memory and brain activity.

 2. Lounge a bit — with a purpose. The buildings include nine lounges, one for each department, to encourage the sort of casual academic interactions than can lead to intellectual breakthroughs, friendly debates or stress-relieving fun.

3. Catch a wave. Once it’s up and running, the Geology Department’s new Hydro Lab will include a 20-foot-long, sixfoot- high wave tank to help students learn about the process of beach erosion.

4. Write on the walls. Again, let us explain. The hallways and labs of the Computer Science Department are covered from floor to ceiling with dry-erase wallboards, allowing near-endless space for students to scrawl. Professors arrive in the morning to discover what students were thinking about the night before.

 5. Enjoy the view. Look north from the third floor of the Lincoln Building and you’ll find a sweeping view of north campus, Claremont and the towering, occasionally snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains. Feel relaxed? Now, back to the books.

6. Save the planet. The buildings’ green-friendly features range from rooftop solar panels to waterless urinals, all designed to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification.

 7. Go acoustic. The new audiometric testing room, which reduces noise and optimizes acoustics for sound recording, will be used by Linguistics and Cognitive Science Professor Mary Paster to study phonetics as well as dying languages and dialects. Paster concedes the room can be a tad eerie at first. “It’s completely dead,” she says. “There’s no echo at all.”

 8. Try on a funky visor. In Professor Martin Hackl’s Eye Tracker Lab, research subjects sit in front of a computer, wearing a visor with two tiny cameras and an infrared light. By tracking the movements of his subjects’ eyes, Hackl searches for new insights into the relationship between thought and language.

9. Play. OK, OK, it’s actually the tykes who get to enjoy the toys or practice social or cognitive tasks in the new child development research room overseen by Psychology Professor Patricia Smiley. Your job is to observe from behind the one-way mirror.

10. Be inspired. In the Lincoln Building, the Intercollegiate Department of Chicano/a Studies is home to “The Struggle for a Home,” a mural by noted L.A. muralist Paul Botello, who teaches here. The vibrant mural tells the story of the successful effort to create a Chicano Studies Department during the ’60s. —Mark Kendall