Walking west up the hill from Trellis Plaza, you will pass our Founders Building (FO) on the right. As the first permanent structure at The University of Texas at Dallas, the Founders Building sits at the heart of the campus. Inside FO, you’ll find our School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NS&M) offering more than 30 undergraduate and graduate programs within its six departments: biological sciences, chemistry and biochemistry, geosciences, mathematical sciences, physics and science/mathematics education. Each program is research-intensive with close cooperation from industry. Additionally you’ll find the Office of Undergraduate Education, supporting pre-law advising, health professions advising and our undergraduate dean’s suite. Dating back to the 1960s, many of the labs in this building were used for NASA projects.
This building also houses a wing known as Founder’s North Building. Founders North holds the large Kusch Auditorium and our UTeach Dallas program. Between Founders and Founders North, you'll find the UTD rock garden, which features 19 large sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rock specimens ranging in weight from 100 pounds to nearly a ton. The oldest rock is a 3.5 billion-year-old gneiss from Wyoming — about three-quarters of the age of the Earth! It is a sample of one of the earliest known rocks in the United States.
Northwest of the Founders Building is where you’ll find the Science Learning Center (SLC). The SLC brings a variety of disciplines together in one space, featuring state-of-the-art classroom lab spaces for chemistry, biology, physics, geosciences and mathematics programs. The building’s tile exterior was inspired by two patterns: atomic emission spectra of gases as well as human DNA (when it is separated in a process called gel electrophoresis). The design of the tile wall incorporates recessed fluorescent lamps covered by lenses that glow at night. And south of the Science Learning Center is our original science building — Berkner Hall, where 2015 Chemistry Nobel Laureate and UT Dallas alumnus, Dr. Aziz Sancar, pursued his research.