State-of-the-Art Biology Center Showcases Evolution of Science : Education: New $13-million facility at private high school campus offers a unique learning experience.

Randi Shockley-Gray’s classroom is bigger than her house.

The 1,700-square-foot biology lab at the private Harvard-Westlake school is the science teacher’s dream--from its sheer size to its extraordinary amenities. Two huge saltwater aquariums line one wall, filled with perch, a Dover sole, shrimp, a baby octopus and a halibut, all collected by her biology students on a research trip. Elsewhere, the latest computer software projects microscopic images on a large screen. Living organisms are examined through high-powered microscopes furnished to every student.

“I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to teach here,” Shockley-Gray said.

At the Munger Science Center, Harvard-Westlake’s new science headquarters, no expense was spared to build what could be the premier high school science department in the nation. The cost: $13 million.

That’s enough to build a suburban elementary school and just a little less than the $15-million grant given by the National Science Foundation to the Los Angeles Unified School District to beef up its science and math teacher training throughout the entire 640,000-student system.

At Harvard-Westlake, however, faculty and administrators were able to work with gifts from a dozen donors, led by school trustee and Los Angeles attorney-turned-businessman Charles Munger. They decided to create a high-tech center based on ideas from the best facilities in the country. But when teachers from the exclusive Studio City school scoured science labs from Washington state to New Jersey, they found nothing that matched their vision.

So the faculty, along with the trustees and the architect--whose own children graduated from the school--designed their version of a top-of-the-line science department. Munger gave about $7.5 million; a dozen other school trustees contributed the rest, including Jane Eisner, wife of Disney chief Michael Eisner, and singer Neil Diamond.

The result is two commanding California-contemporary taupe and teal buildings, linked by a bridge and veranda, containing 12 classroom-laboratories fully stocked for geology, physics, oceanography, invertebrate zoology, even sound and acoustics courses. All in 40,000 square feet, roughly the size of a college football field.

The price tag for furnishings and equipment totaled $1.7 million, including $175,00 for new scales, microscopes and spectrometers. The scanning electron microscope cost $55,000.

The project has left some people in the field in disbelief.

“Usually that kind of money goes for some fancy-dancy weight machine or two swimming pools and a handball court,” said Shirley Malcom, director of education for the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science. “I do find it rather breathtaking.”

One manufacturer, listening in growing disbelief to the school’s shopping list of equipment, asked science department head John Feulner: “Wait a minute, this is for a high school?”

Well, yes, but this isn’t just any high school. With 803 students, Harvard-Westlake is one of the top--and most expensive--private high schools in California, charging $12,000 annual tuition and relying on donations and income from a $15-million endowment.

With a history of high-achieving science students, Harvard-Westlake believes it needs to keep pace with changing technology--and with science education in general.

“Our approach to science in this school is hands-on, laboratory-intensive and that necessitates first-class facilities,” said Tom Hudnut, the school headmaster.

While students still dissect fetal pigs, Harvard-Westlake students also examine living organisms, such as sea urchins and sponges from Shockley-Gray’s aquarium, through microscopes. They analyze data by hooking up their calculators to new computers and conduct chemical experiments under glass-encased fume hoods.

Every classroom is equipped with $23,000 worth of audiovisual equipment, allowing teachers to project textbook pictures and tiny images to aid lectures. CD-ROMs are used to illustrate complex concepts; one teacher uses them to describe plate tectonics to a geology class.

The list goes on and on. The science department has its own computer lab--fast machines that can easily turn raw data into research reports. The lecture hall has computer hookups at every seat so students can take notes directly into laptops.

Each classroom operates on its own water, gas and electrical supply so if one room loses its heat or lights, others will not be affected. And every student has his or her own personal microscope.

In fact, it is the sheer volume of equipment, special orders and unusual construction demands that pushed the price tag to $13 million.

But it is not all high-tech wizardry. There is also a personal feel to the center. Everyone closely associated with the project--which took 14 months to complete and opened this semester--added a touch.

Teachers designed their own classrooms and created custom-built lab tables with eight-inch deep drawers to hold tall glassware. Munger added a bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin. The school’s staff had the whole complex shifted five feet farther into the hillside to preserve a 50-year-old tree with about 80 more years to live.

And both the facility and the extraordinary largess that made it possible are the envy of educators across the country.

“This certainly puts them in a league with only about a dozen other independent schools in the country,” said James T. Kaull, the director of business and development services for the National Assn. of Independent Schools in Washington. “There aren’t many that receive gifts in that amount.”

“This is a huge community with a huge amount of talent,” said Munger, whose children attended Harvard-Westlake. “It would be malpractice . . . not to give them the best facilities in which to learn.”

The school has a long history. Harvard School for Boys opened as a military school with 42 students in 1900 at Western Avenue and Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. It moved to the Coldwater Canyon campus in 1937.

In 1991, Harvard merged with Westlake School for Girls, which had been established in 1904 across the street from MacArthur Park. The girls’ campus moved to Bel-Air in 1927, and now houses grades seven through nine.

When the two schools merged, the trustees and school administrators developed a master plan for capital improvements. Thus the science center.

But while applauding Harvard-Westlake for boosting its science program, educators elsewhere lament the lack of money for science in public schools.

“I only wish there was a way to make this resource available to science-interested kids from other parts of the area,” said Malcom, of the Assn. for the Advancement of Science. “Having access to this kind of equipment is going to give these kids [at Harvard-Westlake] a cutting-edge experience.”

Even at the LAUSD’s showcase science schools--the Francisco Bravo medical magnet school in East Los Angeles and Van Nuys High School’s math/science magnet school--administrators and teachers say they desperately need the basics: updated science textbooks, test tubes, chemicals.

Before joining Harvard-Westlake, science teacher Shockley-Gray spent $5,000 of her own money to build and stock a saltwater aquarium at Los Angeles Unified’s Taft High School that pales next to the one she works with now at Harvard-Westlake.

But even without the Taj Mahal of science centers, some Los Angeles schools are graduating top-achieving science students. The Van Nuys students won the National Science Bowl contest last spring.

“I’m working with less in terms of funding but certainly not less in terms of talent,” said Art Altshiller, who teaches science at Van Nuys High and who coached the winning team. “Do we have the ability to accomplish more” than other schools?, asked Harvard-Westlake science head Feulner. “Absolutely.”

But can they find a cure for cancer? “Not yet,” he said, smiling.