CHARLES CITY — Virginia Commonwealth University’s newest building opened Thursday 23 miles east of its urban campus on the banks of the James River, accessed on a narrow gravel road.
VCU christened the Rice Rivers Center research facility, a $7 million lab and office building designed for students and faculty who study the river’s wildlife, its water quality and the greenhouse gases that affect climate change.
The 14,000-square-foot facility was funded almost completely by donations. More than 23 corporations, foundations and individuals contributed toward the building, which is the third and final primary building on the nearly 500-acre wooded area, opening 21 years after the campus was first envisioned.
VCU President Michael Rao, who gave remarks in a ceremony Thursday, said the university has to meet students where they are in order for VCU to serve as a public good.
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“This will enable us to think beyond ourselves and beyond our own lives,” Rao said.
VCU plans to erect more than $1.2 billion worth of new buildings during the next six years, including a dorm on West Grace Street, an arts building on Broad Street, a science facility on Franklin Street, a student commons in the middle of campus, an athletics village on Hermitage Road, and an interdisciplinary health sciences building on the MCV campus. The university dubbed it “among the most transformative capital plans in VCU’s history.”
All of that comes in addition to the 17-story VCU Health adult outpatient pavilion on North 10th Street scheduled to open in December and the 16-story “Wonder Tower” for the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, scheduled to open in 2023 on East Marshall Street.
The Charles City County campus isn’t VCU’s most far-flung destination – not even close. The university operates an arts school in Doha, Qatar.
The Rice Rivers Center is named for Walter and Inger Rice. Walter Rice was a Reynolds Metals Co. executive and U.S. ambassador to Australia. He and his wife, Inger, owned the sprawling plot of wooded land along the river.
Walter Rice died in 1998, and in 2000, his wife donated 343 acres valued at $2.2 million and $1 million toward a trust to pay for the grounds’ maintenance. She has no direct connection to VCU, said Greg Garman, the center’s director, but she loves students and she lived near then-VCU President Eugene Trani.
Inger Rice approached Trani and wrote out the terms of the deal on a yellow legal pad, Garman said. VCU’s board of visitors approved it as part of the university’s master plan in 2003.
Construction on the grounds was slow, with a $3.4 million education building overlooking the river opening in 2008. A $2.7 million lodge with beds and kitchen space for 22 people came to being in 2017, allowing researchers and guests to stay overnight. The university named it the Inger Rice Lodge.
Inger Rice donated $2 million toward the lodge; it was the first gift Rao received after becoming president in 2009. He invited Rice to dinner at his home, where she presented him with the check .
The coronavirus pandemic delayed funding and construction on the research facility, which opened to students and faculty this semester. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., toured the facility Tuesday, arriving in a canoe. Kaine is an avid canoer.
At the center, students and faculty study the wildlife, the conservation of fisheries and the greenhouse gases entering and exiting plants.
They have tagged some 200 sturgeon with transmitters, allowing researchers to track their movement throughout the river. It was believed that the endangered sturgeon had disappeared from the James until researcher Matt Balazik rediscovered them in part by listening for them with sonar pulled behind a boat.
The researchers catch the fish, run genetic analysis on them to determine their health, then quickly toss them back into the water.
Doctoral students Ellen Stuart-Haentjens and Lisa Haber use a 20-foot tower equipped with $80,000 of equipment to monitor the carbon dioxide and methane in the soil, water and air of the 70-acre wetland. Wetlands are good for the environment because they store carbon in the soil and water. When the carbon is released into the atmosphere, it contributes toward climate change.
Destroying wetlands is dangerous because it releases carbon that takes decades to get back, accelerating climate change, Stuart-Haentjens said. More than half of all wetlands have been lost to development.
The wetland here is a restored one, and researchers are curious if it will function like a natural wetland and whether it is helping or hurting climate change.
Sitting on a lab counter in a large black case was a $35,000 methane analyzer, which reads methane levels 20 times a second. If a device malfunctions in the field, the students no longer have to drive back to campus. Plus, the quicker they can study their samples, the more accurate their findings will be.
“It’s really valuable to the science,” Stuart-Haentjens said.
The way science used to be done, Garman said, a scientist would sit in a lab, conduct research and then publish a paper. Now it’s all collaborative, and people need a space to collaborate and “cross-fertilize.”
“Old science was siloed,” he said. The problems now are so complex, Garman said, “one person, even one lab, can’t be functional in the way we need to.”