Coastal Resource Center

The Coastal Resource Center will link diverse fields by leveraging talent across the wider Rutgers community and will contribute an important cornerstone on the journey to making Rutgers Oceanography one of the top programs in the world.

New Jersey is the country's most densely populated and industrialized coastal state that mirrors global trends with coastal megacities growing worldwide. Given this, society is looking to the sea for sustainable solutions to meet the growing demand for water, food, and energy. This is a central challenge facing the next generation. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey is poised to be the global leader by making the technologies that will map-monitor-understand coastal systems, developing the management-protection strategies that promote a sustainable marine system, and training the next generation through immersive hands-on education.

The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences proposes development of a Coastal Resource Center (CRC), which will provide an integrated teaching and research facility that will serve the needs of the wider student body and enable student research and training by bringing faculty together from Marine and Coastal Sciences, Engineering, Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Mason Gross School of the Arts, and 4-H.

The CRC addresses research and educational needs of the school and Rutgers by creating new modern teaching spaces for existing classes, which will also support projected growth in student numbers and new courses driven by exponential technology changes, and consolidating synergistic but geographically separated research clusters. A formal feasibility study concluded the best solution based on current and future teaching needs, research opportunities, and operations and maintenance costs is a building extension of the existing Marine and Coastal Sciences Building on the George H. Cook Campus.

Support for the Coastal Resource Center will help undergraduate education, including the Raritan Initiative and the Fisheries Science Minor; community and professional education, including 4-H workspace and Operational Oceanography Technology Certificates; and research programs, including the Center of Ocean Observing Leadership (COOL) and Marine Living Resources.