DRI names its Great Basin Research Laboratory in honor of former Regent Dorothy S. Gallagher
The Desert Research Institute has named its Great Basin Environmental Research Laboratory (GBERL) in Reno in honor of former university Regent Dorothy S. Gallagher to recognize her strong support of the institute and close relationship with DRI's faculty and research foundation. DRI President Stephen G. Wells noted during the formal rededication of GBERL that Gallagher was also instrumental in helping the institute secure private financing to construct the unique research facility.
For more than 22 years, Gallagher represented rural central and northern Nevada on the Board of Regents of the University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN), a district that encompassed a large part of the Great Basin region.
"As a regent, Dorothy Gallagher worked to bring our scientists together with Nevada's mining and ranching communities," Wells said. "She also attended the DRI Research Foundation's board meetings on a regular basis to advise it on both system policies and on the Board of Regents expectations regarding the role of the university system's several foundations."
Wells said it was Gallagher's suggestion for DRI to establish a national science medal to raise the institute's profile within the science community that brought the annual Nevada Medal program into being in 1988.
Wells said Gallagher understood that DRI, largely dependent on competitive research grants and contracts, was an entrepreneurial organization with a willingness to assume the risk of private financing to build the advanced research facility that now bears her name. With a $2 million bank loan and $1 million raised by the DRI foundation, DRI constructed a one-of-a-kind facility that enables scientists to operate complete miniature ecosystems with precise environmental control and monitoring capabilities. Wells pointed out that GBERL was the first UCCSN building financed with private funds.
He said one evidence of the success of this approach is the five-year, $3 million project now underway in GBERL involving DRI scientists and others from Oklahoma and the Max Planck Institute in Germany to investigate some of the most basic questions on the interaction of ecosystems and the world's changing climate. "This is one of the premier ecosystem research projects currently funded by the National Science Foundation," Wells said.
Outgoing DRI Faculty Senate Chair Lynn Fenstermaker presented Gallagher with a plaque from the group commending Gallagher's efforts on behalf of DRI. David Fulstone, chair of the DRI Research Foundation, a Lyon County Commissioner, Yerington area rancher and Nevada agricultural community leader, conveyed the admiration and appreciation of the foundation for Gallagher's long record of assistance to the group.
A nonprofit, statewide division of
the University and Community College System of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time
program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and
international scale. Nearly 500 full- and part-time scientists, technicians,
and support staff conduct some 150 research projects at DRI annually. More than
85 percent of DRI's annual $33 million operating budget consists of research
grants and contracts obtained by its scientists. The balance is received from
the state of Nevada for administrative costs.