Proposals

Abstract

Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL) is a world-class marine research facility in the heart of the San Juan Islands. Each year, researchers from all career stages—undergraduates and graduate students, postdoctoral research associates, to senior faulty—flock to FHL to conduct field- and laboratory- based marine research. Particularly with the new Marine Biology major for undergraduates that started in 2018, there is an increased need to update research equipment and purchase new supplies to meet the growing need for students and researchers at FHL. In the few years since the start of the new major, the total number of students enrolled in FHL courses annually increased by 67% from 140 in 2018 to 206 students in 2022 (Mason Wiley, UW FHL, personal communication). This number is a vast underestimate of the total number of researchers—undergraduate research assistants, interns, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty—who visit FHL annually to conduct research. For example, in 2019, a total of 167 researchers across various career stages, including undergraduates, visited FHL to conduct research. As the number of visitors to FHL continues to swell and scientific advances necessitate new supplies and tools, there is a real need for support to purchase and update scientific equipment. Doing so will provide much-needed supplies for field and laboratory projects, enabling student scientists the unique opportunity to conduct hands-on marine research at FHL. This grant is the culmination of student feedback from the last four years; faculty and staff support this proposal.

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