Photo by Makenna Wozniak | The Crow’s Nest
By Irena Mesa
The Science and Technology Building, one of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s lab and teaching spaces, first opened in 2009. Despite the new construction at that time, it’s already had maintenance issues.
“The roof was a problem from day one,” said Dr. Henry Alegria, the associate chair of the university’s chemistry department.
Dr. Ana Hoare, the teaching lab manager of chemistry, also experienced issues with the roof of the building. She told The Crow’s Nest that the roof leaked in several places, and water would collect after it rained and would begin leaking into the labs.
“It became really chronic whenever we had our summer storms, because then you would have a deluge come down every couple of days,” Hoare said.
The issues were eventually fixed, but Hurricanes Helene and Milton brought a new set of problems along with the destruction left in their wake.
Most prominent problems included the roofing, water collecting and leaking from the fume hoods, pressure imbalances causing doors to get stuck and large fluctuations in the building’s temperature.
“We would have periods in the labs where it would get super hot. And then there were other periods of time when it was so frigid that I and my staff had to wear base layers under our clothes to work,” Hoare said.
Following the fall 2024 semester, the department agreed on a plan to have the repairs take place over the winter break. Come spring of 2025, the issues were better, but still apparent.
“We’d report the problems and be told ‘Oh, next week, then month,’ so we would do one week online and thinking were coming in person again, just for them to do give an update and ‘Well, not really,’ and go online again,” Alegria said.
Hoare echoed Alegria’s frustrations with the mix-ups and false promises of the timeline of the repairs. At the end of the spring semester, the decision was made to completely close STG over the summer.
“That job was supposed to have been completed in July. And then it was August. And then the next month and then the next month,” Alegria said.
Part of the problem was found in having different contractors for different parts of the building, such as software, roofing and plumbing — and that created a lot of scheduling issues.
STG did not fully reopen until Nov. 2025. Until that point, labs were fully online or in the Warehouse Lab when possible.
“The frustration is that lab classes are supposed to give students a hands-on experience, not a virtual one,” Alegria said.
Both Alegria and Hoare were upset that they were unable to provide a proper lab experience for their students.
The limited options and the back-and-forth status of STG frustrated a lot of students who frequent the building. Delainey Beams, a sophomore biology major, was one such student.
“There was really only one true lab [last semester]. The others previous to that were like, ‘Oh, just make a periodic table,’ and I felt like I wasn’t actually doing chemistry,” Beams said.
Beams said that she didn’t mind the classes being online, but much like her professors, would have liked to have more notice about the location of her classes, as well as the rate that was paid for the courses.
“If you’re having all of these maintenance issues and you’re charging people who are possibly on financial aid and are paying money to get an in-person lab and have the experience and then they’re getting 75% of their semester online,” Beams said. “It’s just disappointing because there are people who genuinely do enjoy going to the lab, putting on their lab coat and doing experiments. No one wants to have to click through a laggy simulation.”
Haley Beggs, a sophomore majoring in biology, also said that students were unable to drop one of the semester’s labs. In each lab class, students get to select one lab session and connected assignments to exempt themselves from.
“I was going to use my drop to leave early for Thanksgiving, which was the second in person lab that semester. They were like, ‘No, you can’t use that,’ so I had to speak to Dr. Alegria and the [chemistry department] because I couldn’t change my flight,” Beggs said.
Beggs was thankful that the professors allowed her to use that drop but expressed her frustrations in the timing of the notice for the lab drops.
Hoare estimated that the building is about 75% open and is hopeful that all of the repairs will be fully completed soon.
