December 2010 Archives

RMBL needs your financial support in 2010! Please join my family and I in supporting RMBL; Jennie and I have donated $2,500 to RMBL this year. We believe this is a critical time to support RMBL and we strongly believe in RMBL’s importance to larger society. Because of the large investments funders are making in RMBL’s physical plant, it is critical that RMBL raise the funds needed to make certain those investments are used wisely. While we are closing in on our funding benchmarks, we still have approximately $20,000 to raise.

Occasionally people suggest RMBL should focus more on research and education and less on fundraising. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury. RMBL will only exist if we can afford to run it. Eighty years ago RMBL could operate largely by opening its doors and encouraging people to come. Running water and amenities were largely a luxury. If we had such amenities, great! If not, well, science and education went on.

We live in a different world. Running water is no longer a luxury, and providing it no longer involves running a pipe from a spring to a cabin. RMBL has to provide basic services in order to attract scientists and students. And those services are highly regulated. It simply costs more to stay open, whether we are talking about water, financial oversight, or buildings.

What RMBL does is critical for the world. RMBL has a demonstrated track record of providing critical insights into maintaining clean air and clean water, and understanding how biological systems work. We generate the knowledge that our children will eventually use to make informed choices about the world they inherit from us. The value of our long-term research is only going to increase.

Just as importantly, RMBL has had a huge impact on generations of students. Thousands of students have had life-changing experiences at RMBL. Our students go on to careers in a wide range of professions such as scientists, lawyers, doctors, and resource managers. Large numbers of them tell us their time at RMBL was critical in the careers they chose and their ability to incorporate science into those careers. RMBL has helped create a scientifically literate society.

For these reasons, I have no problems with shouting out to the world that RMBL needs your help. Please join Jennie and I in providing the support needed to create an enduring institution.

Why has RMBL persisted for 80+ years? Will it make it to its 100th birthday? I recently spent time with individuals responsible for a wide range of scientific infrastructure projects exploring the general issue of sustainability. Infrastructure projects, e.g., field stations, marine labs, biological databases, natural history collections, are any set of shared resources used to support the scientific activities of a community of users.

Why does some scientific infrastructure, such as RMBL persist, while other projects disappear?
A couple of discussions grabbed my attention. There was a great deal of talk about understanding both who wants access to infrastructure and why they want it. This isn’t a simple issue. While RMBL’s mission of facilitating research and education in and around Gothic has remained constant, the way in which we provide value changes as innovation drives science in new directions. Historically providing housing was critical. Gothic was hard to get to and there were limited housing facilities outside Gothic. Modern transportation and neighboring resort communities makes housing less important. Indeed, advances in remote and distributed sensing may reduce the need for being onsite. However, future scientists may find value not so much in the housing, but in the community and dynamic exchange of ideas. And, as scientists push to answer increasingly complex questions, they may find greater value in talking with other scientists who know a great deal about the ecosystem or in accessing historic data.

Another concept that emerged was “excitement decay”. Initial investments in infrastructure are costly and only come about when an idea is exciting enough to unite a community of users. However, at some point the infrastructure is no longer the newest, sexiest idea. Another project grabs attention. And because starting a new project is very expensive, this new project attracts substantial funds while the older project struggles to obtain funds for operation.

Field stations have an advantage over many infrastructure projects, however, because their value potentially increases with time. In astronomy, technological innovation renders older telescopes obsolete. However, because complex, dynamical biological systems can only be understood by sustained investigation, field stations do not become obsolete. As long as field stations innovate to keep up with the changing demands of scientists, they offer increasing scientific opportunities through time. Understanding, predicting, and managing a changing world is the challenge of our generation. Field stations stand at the center of that endeavor. As one of the world’s largest and oldest field stations, it is in society’s best interest that we ensure the value of RMBL is fully realized.