Provost Announces Phase II for VCU’s Rice Rivers Center
Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D., VCU’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, and Srirama Rao, Ph.D., VCU’s vice president for research and innovation, announced today that the VCU Rice Rivers Center is being repositioned to serve as a resource to the entire university. The idea for the change was among the final recommendations of the One VCU Academic Repositioning Task Force and an external review of the center commissioned last year by the Office of the Provost.
“The VCU Rice Rivers Center is a unique VCU asset that offers unlimited potential in terms of research, teaching, and the VCU student experience,” Sotiropoulos said. “Greg Garman and the rest of the center’s team have been doing incredible work there, while advocating for what more could be achieved at the center with greater university focus and investment. They’re right, and now is the time to move it forward.”
In approving the university’s current operating budget, VCU’s Board of Visitors approved additional resources to begin the next phase of the Rice Rivers Center, focused on four key goals:
- Increase sponsored research
Significantly grow the current $5M in externally sponsored awards supporting center faculty to enable the center to reach its full potential and impact. - Establish research leadership
The center is uniquely positioned to emerge as a global leader in, among others, biodiversity, aquatic habitat restoration, public health, and environmental sustainability research. Its unique location at the northern edge of the most diverse terrestrial system in North America along with its facilities and VCU’s exceptional faculty position the center to compete for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal, state, and non-profit research priorities. - Stronger campus integration
As the center becomes a university-wide resource, the potential exists for nearly unlimited transdisciplinary research and learning opportunities engaging faculty and students across the entire institution, including the health sciences campus. - Serve more undergraduate and graduate students
The existing and growing opportunities at the center are tailor-made for the university’s QEP plan, “Every Ram’s a Researcher” to help more undergraduate students, regardless of major, gain research experience.
Effective January 1, 2025, the center will report to the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, with a dotted line reporting relationship to the Office of the Provost. Additional details about VCU Rice Rivers Center Phase II will be announced soon, including the hiring of additional faculty members, support personnel, and senior leadership.
Categories Academic Affairs, Academic Repositioning, Faculty Affairs, Provost