Shortly before he was appointed president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Dr. Ramesh Kolluru asked the UL System Board to approve the sale of five properties in an effort to close the University’s remaining $12 million deficit. Among the five are a 600-acre experimental research farm and a 50-acre Ecology Center, sparking concerns in the biological sciences and geosciences departments.
According to The Advocate, the UL System Board unanimously voted to approve the advertising and auctioning of the Cade experimental research farm and the Ecology Center, along with a residential home and a small, empty lot. Before the sales are publicised and auctioned, the University would have to “seek permission from the Louisiana Legislature’s House and Senate natural resources committees.”
In another recent article published by The Advocate, it was reported that the University received an appraisal on the Cade experimental research farm, which evaluated the property to be worth about $3.5 million.
The Cade experimental research farm, located in St. Martinville, and the Ecology Center, located about six miles from the University’s campus, are both essential learning and research spaces for ecology and environmental biology. News of the potential sale of these spaces alarmed students, faculty and community members who actively conduct field work there.
Dr. Kelly Robinson, director of the Ecology Center and an assistant professor under the biology department, said that she was informed by Kolluru on the decision to propose the sale a day before he presented it at the Feb. 26 UL System Board meeting. Robinson said the following Monday, she held a listening hour open to students and faculty, to answer questions and address concerns.
“I need to be an advocate for the research activities, for all my faculty stakeholders who have a lot less flexibility. So that’s folks like the plant physiologist, like Nick Kooyers, for example, who have plants in the ground, right? And they’re not easily moved.”
Dr. Nicholas Kooyers, an assistant professor in the biology department, is currently working on a research of Cajun prairie plants, specifically with two dominant bunch grasses, switchgrass and little bluestem. Uprooting the plants would result in a direct impact on the research efforts.
Kooyers said, “It’s pretty hard to move that experiment, because those plants have now been in the ground for two years. We started them out as tiny little plants in there, and now they’re over 15 foot tall.”
Commenting on the value of the Ecology Center, Kooyers said that the conditions of the prairie there are so unique that research being done there would likely be difficult to replicate elsewhere. He said, “It gives relevance to our Cajun prairie ecosystem that’s here and that’s unique to us. There’s no other place that you could actually do research on the Cajun prairie.”
“It’s concerning that we wouldn’t have that field station or that access anymore.”
Madeline Moore is a graduate student in environmental resource science who also received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from UL Lafayette. Actively advocating for the University to keep the Cade experimental research farm and the Ecology Center, Moore started a petition on change.org.
At the time that this story was written, the petition had received 1,882 signatures. Moore said that she created the petition with the hopes of gathering the support of not just students, faculty and staff of UL Lafayette, but also the local community.
She said, “People, more than just… students, but just people who just appreciate native plants and appreciate environmental work, and they want to see something like this be able to stay because we do important research.”
Moore shared that when she was an undergraduate student, she worked at the Ecology Center as a greenhouse technician, maintaining, propagating and seeding plants, and joined the Wetland Ecosystem Science Lab as an undergraduate research assistant. She also took classes there where she got to learn about native Cajun prairie and conduct ground biomass measurements.
Moore stressed the importance of practical experience for a field of study such as environmental science. She said, “You can learn about different things in the classroom, but it just doesn’t translate unless you see it for yourself in person.”
As a graduate student, Moore shared that she received a fellowship under the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which was only possible due to access to the Cade experimental research farm. She said, “Without that access, I would not have been able to write a research proposal that could have gotten funded by NSF and have funded my master’s degree.”
Dr. Andrea Westerband, an assistant professor in ecology and evolution under the biology department, currently teaches a field methods class which heavily depends on the Ecology Center as part of the curriculum. She shared that her students are there weekly to collect data and learn different field techniques such as identifying different species.
She said, “It’s a very practical course. A huge number of students… rely on that course. It’s one of… the key requirements for biology, is to fulfil a course that has a field-based component.”
Besides using the facilities at the Ecology Center to conduct classes, Westerband also said that she can better train students who can then be involved in her research lab. She shared that she recently applied for grants which would go toward her research on native prairie restoration, and those grants are reliant on her access to the Ecology Center, where she would conduct most of the research work.
She said, “If the Ecology Center were to be sold, we would have to drastically change the scope and the focus of those grant proposals. So one of those proposals would probably not be approved at all.”
Sharing her thoughts on the impact on the University’s research aspect, Westerband said that the Cade experimental research farm and Ecology Center are spaces that expand possibilities and improve research potential. She said, “If UL is trying to move towards not just a biomedical focus or professional degree focus, but also keeping focus on ecology and especially coastal biology restoration conservation, then we’re going to lose a lot of our ability to tackle questions in those particular research areas.”
At this time, there has yet to be a decision made by the University on the selling of the Cade experimental research farm and Ecology Center.