Gift will build hi-tech coastal studies center for Marin's educators and students

SAN FRANCISCO, November 11, 2002---A $250,000 gift from the Marin Community Foundation (MCF) will enable San Francisco State University's Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies (RTC) to offer hands-on, discovery-based learning on marine ecology and the environment to Marin's educators, students and community.

The grant will fund the building of a two-room Information Technology and Training Center at the research and teaching facility located on the coast of the Tiburon Peninsula. The computerized classroom and laboratory space will allow RTC to give technical training on water quality, coastal restoration, biodiversity and sustaining healthy ecosystems. New summer programs for the community at large will focus on biodiversity and preserving local natural resources, and refresher courses for middle school and high school teachers will update their science content knowledge, laboratory skills and field experiences.

"We are so fortunate to have such a world-renowned teaching and research facility in Marin," said MCF President and CEO Thomas Peters in announcing the grant. "The new Information Training and Technology Center will make it possible for Marin to take advantage of RTC's rich storehouse of scientific information, tools and techniques."

"As a facility for environmental studies, one of our goals is to serve as an educational resource that provides Bay Area educators with scientific expertise, exposure to field and research projects and increased awareness of coastal and estuarine environmental issues," says RTC director Alissa Arp. "We're enormously grateful to the Marin Community Foundation for making greater, more effective outreach possible."

The Information Technology and Training Center is part of an ongoing $8.5 million campaign to renovate and enhance RTC's main educational and research facility, Building 36. Renovation began in 1996 with funding from the National Science Foundation that, together with support from the University and private donors, has been utilized to complete more than one-third of the planned changes.

Dedicated to fostering the health and understanding of the San Francisco Bay and its surrounding environments, the Romberg Tiburon Center is the only academic research facility situated on San Francisco Bay. The marine field station and its research vessel, the R/V Questuary, are located on the coast of the Tiburon Peninsula, 30 minutes north of San Francisco in the heart of the West Coast's largest estuary. The Center's mission is to conduct significant environmental research, to educate and train the next generation of scientists and to serve as an educational resource on estuarine and coastal environmental issues. RTC scientists pursue active research in such areas as biodiversity, community ecology, oceanography, wetland ecology and restoration, and the distribution, productivity and abundance of marine life.

The Marin Community Foundation is the primary center for philanthropy in Marin County, California. Dedicated to enhancing the community's quality of life, the Foundation provides support in the areas of the arts, community development, education, the environment, human needs, and religion, ethics and conscience.

The Foundation administers assets from the Leonard and Beryl H. Buck Trust and from funds entrusted by almost 200 Marin individuals, families, companies and community groups. The largest community foundation in California and fourth largest in the United States, the Foundation awards approximately $50 million in grants annually.