Great Lakes Research Consortium
Buffalo State College Great Lakes Institute
The Great Lakes Center at Buffalo State College is unique in the SUNY system as the only facility with an on-shore experimental laboratory on the Great Lakes and a fleet of research vessels capable of operating in the open waters of the lakes. The Center is a special resource that links high-quality research with graduate and undergraduate education, increasing the college’s role and visibility in the environmental sciences. The Center also serves as a regional resource that promotes activities that enrich the cultural, social, and intellectual lives of the people of western New York. The Great Lakes Center brings together eight full-time researchers and more than 20 affiliated faculty from seven academic departments, with particular emphasis on the specialties of watershed hydrology, water quality, environmental toxicology and chemistry, aquatic ecology, fisheries, urban ecology, and environmental education.
Currently the Center is engaged in 25 research projects funded at over $3,500,000. In addition, the Center actively promotes collaborative research with other academic and research institutions in the United States and Canada. By fostering collaboration among units within the college and between the college and other institutions, the Center maintains a diverse, multi-disciplinary faculty that provides a stimulating atmosphere for innovative research and intellectual growth. In doing so, the Center affords students a unique opportunity for hands-on training in environmental science and management that significantly broadens their educational experience, job prospects, and ability to make informed decisions.
Priorities for Facility and Program Improvements for Fiscal Year 2004
Buffalo State College requests funds to build and equip a world-class research facility at its lakefront property. This new facility will house the Great Lakes Research Institute, whose purpose is to address the deficiency in our capacity to understand and manage the resources of the Great Lakes in a coordinated manner. Planning, development and management of the Great Lakes Research Institute will be carried out in a collaborative project consisting of Buffalo State College, together with SUNY Brockport and the University at Buffalo.
As its part of the project, Buffalo State College will expand and enhance its premier Lake Erie research facility. SUNY Brockport will develop a resource center that will provide a base of operations on Lake Ontario and adjacent habitats. The University at Buffalo will develop and maintain the major computing terminal for the Institute through its Center for Computational Research, and provide key hydrodynamic and chemical modeling of the lakes. The primary users of these enhanced facilities will be students, faculty and researchers from the three member institutions of the Great Lakes Research Institute. Additional users will be faculty and researchers from the New York Great Lakes Research Consortium (GLRC) and resource managers from various agencies that have programmatic interest and management responsibilities in the Great Lakes basin. Bringing these groups together in a single facility will promote and enhance collaborative and multi-disciplinary research efforts that can draw on the strengths of each.
CONTACT
Gordon S. Fraser, Director
Great Lakes Center
Buffalo State College
1300 Elmwood Ave.
Buffalo, NY 14222
Phone: 716-878-4329
E-mail: frasergs@buffalostate.edu
Web: GL Center at Buffalo homepage