Planning Grant for the Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University

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AbstractPlanning Grant for the Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityA grant has been awarded to Virginia Commonwealth University under the direction of Dr. L. Smock to develop a strategic plan to guide the development of programs and infrastructure at the University's new biological field station, the Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences. The site, consisting of about 350 acres of undeveloped land along the James River near Richmond, Virginia, supports a diversity of terrestrial and aquatic habitats that will greatly enhance VCU's research capabilities, university-level instruction, and outreach education programs for K-12 students and life-long learners. Establishment of this field station, which is only 30 minutes from downtown Richmond, is especially exciting because of its proximity to our urban campus and its ability to serve a relatively large urban and rural population of students of underrepresented ethnicity. The focus of the Planning Grant is to hold a series of workshops to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for the Center. Participants of one workshop will be drawn from field stations throughout the region, drawing on their experience to develop plans pertaining to administration, data management, and research and education programs at the station. A second workshop will bring together researchers from academic and government agencies to develop potential research collaborations focused on the ecology, conservation and policy issues of large rivers, this being the proposed primary focus of research at the Rice Center. A third set of workshops will focus on outreach education, bringing together appropriate K-12 teachers and administrators from the surrounding school districts, as well as potential partnering organizations and agencies, to develop a comprehensive plan for the development of outreach programs. The outcome of these activities will be a written 5-10 year strategic plan for the Rice Center.The proposed activities have both strong intellectual merit and broader impacts to the public. Development of the Rice Center, as guided by the outcome of this Planning Grant, will result in a field station with a clear direction toward supporting a wide range of collaborative research activities focused on the ecology of large rivers. The high number of students of underrepresented ethnicities both in universities and K-12 programs throughout the region who will have direct access to programs at the Rice Center is significant. This field station has the potential to greatly impact instructional activities throughout the region and to greatly enhance opportunities for faculty, university-students, K-12 programs and life-long learners.