Renovation and expansion of core facilities for interdisciplinary urban biogeochemistry research at Towson University

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). In this award, research laboratories of the Urban Environmental Biogeochemistry Laboratory (UEBL) will be renovated. The rooms were built in 1976 and have never been renovated. The renovation will convert a sample preparation laboratory, a nearby rock preparation room, and adjacent support spaces into an integrated suite of research laboratories that include, at one end, a sample intake laboratory and a sample processing laboratory, and at the other, two new culture and organismal experimentation laboratories and a high-tech chemistry instrumentation laboratory. Towson University is located in the middle of an urban-to-rural gradient, which provides an ideal setting to study the effects of urbanization on natural systems, including their modification by humans and interactions with human social systems. Faculty members and students from Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Geosciences and Environmental Science focus in a multidisciplinary way on the functional interrelationships between chemical, physical, geological and biological processes that control the sources, transport, cycling and fate of elements and compounds in urban/suburban systems. Towson University faculty members are research active with federally funded programs. Towson University is one of NSF's REU sites.The renovation will enhance the safety of students conducting research while providing an efficient work space that will enhance research productivity and the research experience of students engaged in these programs. Towson University has a highly diverse student population with minority retention and graduation rates that exceed the national average.