Infrastructure supporting interdisciplinary scholarship across southern California:
Proposal for organizing the Environmental Research Facilities at UC-Irvine
Communicated by Kailen Mooney, Peter Bowler, Tim Bradley, Steve Weller, & Travis Huxman
Summary
We propose aligning the environmental research assets at UCI (the Natural Reserve Sites,
Greenhouse, Arboretum, Ecological Preserve, Site-Partnership Agreements, etc.) into a single administrative unit that can more effectively allocate resources and align activities with our core research, education, and service mission. This new structure relies on developing professional staff and more transparent faculty governance. We propose a vision for an optimal staffing structure that provides organizational flexibility and resilience. We detail funding requirements for this vision and highlight some opportunities for revenue beyond the Department, School, and
Office of Research. We highlight how this administrative change and influx of resources can well position UCI as an innovator in undergraduate and graduate education, faculty scholarship, and community engagement. The combined outcome should favorably impact both grant competitiveness and development.
Overview and proposal
The challenges facing society in the coming decades span the full breadth of the traditional disciplinary scope of University faculty. Issues, such as climate change, require scholarship at the nexus of biology, hydrology, geology, atmospheric chemistry, anthropology, economics and political science. Challenges in other sectors, such as education, require collaborative, translational research with close partnerships between University faculty and both practitioners and other stakeholders. The traditional University structure can present a challenge, as well as an opportunity, with regard to interdisciplinary work; traditional disciplinary structures provide expertise across a broad scope of issues, but at the same time can constrain collaborations both on and off campus. UCI’s original intent was an academic structure that dealt specifically with these opportunities. Accordingly, it is important to constantly acknowledge these challenges and continue to develop the tools, human resources, partnerships and research capacity to tackle such broadly impacting society challenges. The University has acknowledged this challenge through the funding of initiatives, such as “Water UCI” and “UCI Sustainability”.
With respect to issues of the environment, what is needed are vehicles to unite diverse faculty efforts synergistically – to build multiple “knowledge networks” that can be used to understand the complex coupling of biological, hydrological, sociological, and economic systems. The
National Science Foundation has made such coupling front and center in their newly funded programs. Many of the new SEES (Science, Engineering, and Education, for Society) Funding opportunities require this flavor of scholarship. Put simply, to be competitive in this environment
UCI needs settings where our diverse faculty can easily interact with each other, with students, and with the impacted publics.
In an effort to match University infrastructure to this emerging science playing-field, we propose a focusing of existing resources on our University and close-partner assets that span across the social, economic, climatic and geologic features of southern California (Figure 1). Our goal is to leverage existing sites of significant research, where the place-based focus has allowed for excellent scholarship, tangible interdisciplinary interactions, and community-based partnerships that engage our faculty and students in meaningful real-world problems. These assets span a diversity of systems ranging from the offshore and coastal ecosystems and economies of the

Orange County coast (Crystal Cove State Park) to the hyper-arid and complex ecohydrology of the lower Sonoran Desert (Anza-Borrego and Salton Sea State Parks), with many, place-based nodes along this southern California ocean-to-desert transect (Fig. 1). We also propose strategic investment in these assets to facilitate coordinated operations and create opportunity for the University to do more scholarship and education. Our proposal includes creating a single administrative unit to act as an umbrella structure for the management, operations, and leveraging of these units, and a specific faculty governance that allows for communication and optimal allocation of resources across the different programs. We take advantage of the existing Natural Reserve Sites and campus owned land as the backbone of this ocean-to-desert transect, because existing funds can be better spent and we have an obligation to programs that utilize these infrastructures. We believe that our proposed structure achieves the potential described above that faculty can leverage for their scholarship and teaching, minimizes risks of instability currently present in the contemporary management of these facilities, optimizes the use of existing funds to become more efficient, and leverages themes of the environment for development. We are not naïve – our plan described here is a vision that we know will take effort from all levels of the university (including faculty) on a time-frame of several years for full development (2-7 for full development).
The Environmental Research Facilities: organization plans and resource allocation
The continued contribution of our environmental assets to the transformative scholarship carried out by UCI faculty depends critically upon administrative structure and staff / infrastructure investment. Where as UCI is currently programmatically committed to each asset (Fig. 1), five of these sites are managed/owned principally by UCI, and their functionality and contribution thus depend upon existing resources. Currently funding for the operations and staffing comes mostly from the School of Biological Sciences (Arboretum, Greenhouse) and the Office of
Research (San Joaquin Marsh Reserve, BurnsPiñon Ridge Reserve, Steele/Burnand Anza-
Borrego Desert Research Center). Some assets are unstaffed / unfunded at the moment
(Ecological Preserve), and some have no specific reporting or staffing structure, and are managed opportunistically (e.g., Crystal Cove SP MOU, Back-Bay Science Center MOU, The
New Irvine Ranch Conservancy collaboration, Nature Reserve of Orange County Board membership, etc.) (see Table 1-4 on staffing, operations, revenue and needs below). In some cases, the campus has an obligation to provide management and a legal obligation for specific environmental stewardship (through the Nature Reserve of Orange County).
I. We propose to use the existing Special Research Unit in place governing the Steele/Burnand
Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center as the administrative unit for the entire environmental research assets (Figure 2). This would provide a single source for decision-making (a single
Faculty Director, appointed by, and reporting to the Vice-Chancellor for Research), a single place to decide on site-specific faculty oversight (the Faculty Director will make appointments based on recommendations from Department Chairs and Deans to a Committee of Faculty Site
Directors), the potential for more coordinated fund-raising and program-level investment
(through an Advisory Board assisting with development and single-campus proposals to UCOP opportunities for additional funding), and a single interface for administrators on campus to access the program relative to issues associated with these assets. This single line-ofcommand, will be informed in part by the Committee of ‘Faculty Site Directors’ representing the different environmental facilities (e.g., NRS sites themselves) and programs (e.g., outreach and education), yet a single individual faculty will remain responsible to the administration. A member of this Committee of Faculty Directors will be appointed by the NRS UCOP Director from eligible UCI faculty to represent UCI in UCOP programming.

History has resulted in insufficient resource investment across our facilities to simply operate the disparate sites, not to mention to fully leverage the potential contribution of these UCI-managed assets to do great work. For example, the Arboretum and Ecological Preserve currently receive no managerial oversight, while the scope of assets associated with the Steele/Burnand Anza-
Borrego Desert Research Center are expanding faster than the original business model intended and in excess of what current managerial support can reasonably sustain. At the same time, potential synergism in managerial oversight across assets is neglected. For example, the two desert assets (Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center and the
BurnsPiñon Ridge Reserve) share similar challenges and opportunities, but are overseen by separate managers. The technical staff supporting some on-campus assets (Arboretum) are not leveraged to provide support to other, adjacent assets (San Joaquin Marsh Reserve, Ecological
Preserve, Greenhouse). Few of these sites are aligned with current educational trends in our curriculum, where field courses and experiences in natural settings could set UCI apart from other campuses in the system and create opportunities for development that we have not chased down (the Marsh Reserve is the only NRS site within walking distance from a UC
Campus, and has led the entire system in annual student visits for some time). Just as the transect assets’ contribution to transformative scholarship depends on coordination among researchers, practitioners and stake holders, so to does the successful management of these assets depend on coordination at the level of staffing.
II. Based upon the dual issues of insufficient and uncoordinated staffing, we propose a revised organizational structure of the UCI-managed transect assets that the faculty would imagine as the optimal operational scope (Fig. 2). The proposed structure for facility staff includes a single chain of command to a professional staff director position to oversee the day-to-day operations of these programs that reports directly to the Faculty Director. Site-based managers report to this single staff director, and technicians and supporting staff are assigned to specific sites. An advantage of this structure is the flexibility in allocating personnel between sites and building resilience into the operations. For example, pesticide and herbicide use is common at the
Greenhouse, Arboretum, Ecological Preserve, and Marsh yet currently there is no mechanism to allow individuals with pesticide application skills to operate across sites. Likewise, staffing levels at all sites are so low that both sick leave and vacation time is impossible to manage, leaving some facilities at risk and un-attended. In addition, current retirement patterns put the transfer of site operational knowledge at risk and the long-term consistent management of the program in question. The single reporting structure would allow for the flexible application of different individuals across the different facilities to best utilize staff to achieve the facility’s mission of supporting research and education.
III. As detailed above, the change in structure and staffing across the entire program is strategic, but these changes occur at a cost. Currently, the combined facilities operate with an approximate annual budget of $457,000 (see Table 3 – slight differences in our current and planned costs are associated with anticipated increases in activity at SBABDRC). The changes in structures and operations in our proposed plan consists annual operating cost increases of
$45,000, annual staffing cost increases of $387,239, and one-time investments of $160,000.
The details of the ~4.5 increase in Full Time Equivalents across the different organizational units are presented in Figure 2, where open boxes are new positions within the hierarchy.
Thus, we anticipate that in the final form, the combined facilities and programs will require an annual budget of approximately $1,000,000. The change in staffing represents a net increase in staff across a range of classifications, but could be achieved over time, and in combination with other opportunities developing in the University.

Current Revenue and Opportunities for Funding
Initial discussions suggested that the School of Biological Sciences may commit, in principle, to facilitating the daily operations of this unit. The various Faculty Directors currently appointed as oversight have all agreed to this general plan. The alignment of the different programs, currently under Biological Sciences
’ management (such as the Arboretium) appears strategic given the recent change in program mission. The NRS Central Office has been requesting our re-alignment and clarification of our decision structure at UCI for some time. Our external partners are in need of a simple ‘front-door’ to the university. In the management of the
Ecological Preserve, we’ve avoided problems, simply by the attention of faculty and staff beyond their appointed duties. Thus, the timing for this change is excellent and will both reduce risk and position us well in some programs.
Biological Sciences ’ major contribution will be with the day-to-day management of the program by investing in business management (Figure 2). We are currently in conversation concerning the plan, but suggest the proposed structure and budget as a 5 year plan, where some fraction of the operating costs will be required as long-term committed funds from the department, school, office of research, and some seed-funding will be necessary with identified end-dates will facilitate the time required for us to compete for UCOP, external grant, and development dollars. However, we need the administrative structure assigned and the initial budgetary capacity to tackle this plan.
There are a number of existing opportunities that could contribute revenue to this program:
(1) UCOP is finalizing a review of the entire NRS program and one of its major areas identified for ‘fixing’ is the allocation of resource from UCOP to the different campus organizations (currently ranges from ~$20K to over $500K per year). UCI receives less than the average allocation from UCOP (~$90K), yet has excellent participation in the
Marsh, and one of the most exciting new sites in the reserve system. I t’s anticipated that the re-budgeting will be extremely favorable to our program. The current allocation is historical based and has no relationship to contemporary operations. This proposal is key to ‘stepping-up-to-the-plate’ and illustrating our commitment to the NRS.
(2) UCOP-NRS has annual competition for funds available for use at sites for critical functions. These funds, ~$20-50K per year are available for key investment in infrastructure, operations, or seeding programs. Our sites have not approached this opportunity with any strategy and currently our inability to spend out existing funds prevents our ability to apply annually. This is low hanging fruit.
(3) The opportunities associated with Outreach and Education are not insignificant. The current land-gift offered by Ms. Steele-Burnand is an example of an area where revenue sources managed appropriately could be complimentary in our programs (some of operational funds in the proposed land-gift endowment to the Center for Environmental

Biology could cover the education and outreach duties associated with the Reserve
Manager position in Anza-Borrego – offsetting expenses in this proposed budget).
(4) The Special Research Unit can be leveraged as an opportunity to route grant proposals that utilize the facilities – providing a mechanism for indirect cost recovery to the plan proposed here. Within Biological Sciences, this is a zero-sum game, but across the entire University, this is not so, and the additional use by other programs may be a source of revenue.
(5) There is a need to look comprehensively at the fee structure of the facilities. Some are unlikely to generate revenue, due to the nature of their use (the greenhouse may be an example we’ve just evaluated), whereas others may have potential, especially with outside-partners that can increase the revenue stream associated with the program costs (such as the Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center), or student fees that cover the cost of an educational experience in the locale.
(6) A special mission of these programs is undergraduate education. There has been a commitment of a number of programs to get undergraduates into the field (EcoEvo,
ESS, Social Ecology, etc.). The fact that there is next to no contribution to these NRS sites from the Facilities program at the University is inconsistent with the educational component of these assets. This probably reflects an informational issue – where the extensive use of some facilities by students is simply not well documented in the
University. Whether it’s through an increased contribution of the University to the upkeep and maintenance of these sites, or through student fees for classes that use these sites, it’s not out of the question to assume a revenue source that could provide some relief or support for staff and operations.
(7) The University has a special obligation to the Ecological Preserve, which is enrolled in the local HCP/NCCP (Habitat Conservation Planning Area, Natural Community
Conservation Planning Area, set in place by the re-authorization of the Federal and
State Endangered Species Acts). This en rollment allowed(s) for a specific level of ‘take’ for the University in sensitive habitat for cactus wren and gnatcatcher species. UCI has conservation and management obligations associated with this site and does not currently apply any resources to the issue. If there is a case for funds from the
Administration, this clearly is the area of need.
(8) Traditional programs at the National Science Foundation offer opportunities to develop infrastructure at various levels. A combined strategy is important to thinking about in proposal development – we have been successful to date, with EcoEvo landing a grant to upgrade the greenhouse (in 2012), and a recommended proposal to be used at Anza for environmental sensing infrastructure (2014). However, we can advance the program below with a coordinated plan for proposal submission that is focused on upgrades, needs, and increasing external use of our sites (where we may be able to collect fees).

(9) Development should not be understated. Our site at Anza-Borrego has been involved in multiple, million dollar gifts, and has a legacy donor with significant capacity. The greenhouse has recently attracted the investment of funds from a donor that is looking for a longer commitment (the Voss Family Trust). Hana Ayala’s efforts have clear impacts for these facilities – especially the Ecological Preserve. The environment theme is one that the University and this unit can capitalize upon, with coordinated efforts at development . The alignment of the University’s assets is attractive from this framework in that it provides a clear vision of what UCI is doing with ecology and the environment.
Much of this opportunity is still to be taken - the Ecological Preserve on campus is an asset of extreme value to the local community and within the open-space system of
Orange County, yet it has not been used as a development vehicle.
There are developing opportunities that could contribute revenue to this program:
(10) The current and future revenue opportunities in the Center for Environmental Biology, including the distribution of duties across the current principle scientist (Sarah Kimball), education and outreach coordinator, and other staffing positions (CEB currently employs two part-time technicians that could operate in synergy with these sites). The proposal for CEB continuation is an opportunity to explicitly develop the CEB – NRS connections and add to the staff capacity associated with managing partners and education/outreach.
In addition, CEB’s current funding opportunities with The Nature Conservancy and the
Nature Reserve of Orange County could potentially provide some level of support for technical staff.
(11) Other education and outreach opportunities are in development, such as the proposed
Professional Master’s Degree Program in process for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in Conservation and Restoration Science. This program will likely leverage and contribute to the use of the NRS and other environmental asset sites and also potentially generate revenue that could be associated with activities on those sites, or provide staffing to offset some costs. UCI Sustainability will be evaluating additional programs in the next year that may be of relevance.
(12) Other strategies for funding exist – for example, at several other schools in the nation, faculty have voluntarily elected to contribute fractions of their proposal revenues to the common activities that occur in their environmental research centers and facilities (Utah
State, UC Boulder, etc.). A similar plan for the faculty identified that use our ‘transect’ could result in additional revenue streams. This is especially true if the Environmental
Research Facilities were involved in data management or data-driven activities that could be a core component of proposal costs. In addition, the technical staff at the different facilities are likely partially supportable by grant dollars, should they be leveraged for sponsored projects (which they should). It is extremely common for faculty

to support partial FTE’s with their grants, and the ability to leverage these funds across the different programs could be attractive from a program stability framework.
Opportunities, Positioning, and Conclusions
This proposal here illustrates a transect that spans the breadth of important climate, economic and social gradients in southern California, from regions in the Sonoran Desert lying below sea level, through the mountain ranges and foothills, to coastal communities adjacent to the Pacific.
They contain a transect of the southern region of our State not only in a geographic sense, but also with regard to economics, biology, politics, climate, sources of water and energy, demographics and ethnicity. The sites provide concrete bases for the work in the region being carried out by our students, faculty and staff and could affect all aspects of the University, constrained around the theme of Environment. In addition to their role in supporting research and housing students and faculty, these sites provide recognizable centers at which community members can interact with UCI and recognize its presence and activity in the region. Examples include undergraduates serving as counselors at a science camp at the Salton Sea, researchers addressing groundwater conservation in Borrego Springs, faculty and students carrying out cutting-edge research in conservation biology with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, and flood mitigation studies at the Newport Bay estuary. Packaging this asset of our community is an opportunity to clearly articulate what we are about in the environment. It’s interesting to note that UCI may be the campus that actually puts more undergraduate students into a natural setting for a learning experience than any-other UC campus (through the numbers that go to the
Marsh). Coordinated across the facilities, and integrated into the curriculum, this single statistic could be terribly important in defining the flavor of science at UCI.
Our capacity to address issues vital to the health, growth, and prosperity of southern California depends on our ability to extend our research and teaching activities directly into the relevant communities. Issues such as public health, regional and urban planning, energy acquisition and conservation, or equality of economic opportunity require the capacity to address the problems in a site-specific manner. UCI has a vital role to play by providing research expertise, promoting and informing public discourse, and providing educational opportunities for our students, the public, stakeholders, and decision-makers. Importantly, limited resources and the difficulty of creating partnerships restrict our ability to ‘do everything everywhere’. Thus, the ability to use a comprehensive transect to compare and contrast these sites creates a strategic opportunity to extend the impacts of our scholarship. These transect assets are supporting research that involves faculty in seven schools (Appendix A). Accordingly, these assets serve as valuable resources for every discipline of our diverse campus, and serve as a vital link in our attempts to engage in multi-disciplinary, transformative research.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Table 1. Environmental Research Facilities Budge: Personnel
Type FTE Salary ERE
Special Research Unit
Faculty director 0.11
Director of ERF 1.0
Manager
Assistant
1.0
0.5
Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center
Faculty director 0.11
Manager 0.75
Technician
Assistant
1.0
0.5
$163,000
$80,000
$40,000
$25,000
Grad Assist
Burns-Pinion Reserve
Faculty director 0.11
Manager 0.25
Technician
Steward
1.0
0.11
$100,000
$80,000
$40,000
$40,000
San Joaquin Marsh Reserve
Faculty director 0.11
Manager 0.75
Technician 0.5
$163,000
$70,000
$50,000
$25,000
$100,000
$50,000
$40,000
Ecological Preserve
Faculty director 0.11
Manager 0.25
Technician 0.5
Greenhouse
Faculty director 0.11
Manager 0.5
Technician 0.5
Arboretum
Faculty director 0.11
Manager 0.5
Technician
Total Personnel:
0.5
$100,000
$50,000
$40,000
$120,000
$50,000
$40,000
$100,000
$50,000
$40,000
$3,260
$26,600
$19,000
$9,500
$3,260
$30,400
$15,200
$9,500
$2,000
$30,400
$15,200
$15,200
$2,000
$19,000
$15,200
$2,000
$19,000
$15,200
$2,400
$19,000
$15,200
$2,000
$19,000
$15,200
$13,464
$34,500
$27,600
Total
$18,289
$96,600
$69,000
$17,250
$18,289
$82,800
$55,200
$17,250
$30,000
$11,220
$27,600
$55,200
$6,072
$11,220
$51,750
$27,600
$11,220
$17,250
$27,600
Request
$0
$96,600
$69,000
$0
$0
$0
$0
$0
$0
$11,220
$27,600
$55,200
$5,465
$11,220
$0
$0
$11,220
$17,250
$0
$13,464
$34,500
$0
$11,220
$34,500
$27,600
$800,293
$0
$34,500
$0
$387,239

$0
$0
$0
$0
$0
$0
$0
F&M
$0
$20,000
F&M
$45,000

Table 3. Environmental Research Facilities Budget: Revenue
Category
Special Research Unit
Eco Evo
Bio Sci
OR
UCOP
Sub-Total:
Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center
Biological Sciences 10 yrs (to 2022)
Physical Sciences 5 yrs (to 2017)
Engineering 5 yrs (to 2017)
ICS 5 yrs (to 2017)
Social Sciences 5 yrs (to 2017)
Social Ecology 5 yrs (to 2017)
CALIT2 5 yrs (to 2017)
Office of Research 5 yrs (to 2017)
Office of the President (one time)
Endowment Yield Average yield
Estimated Fee Revenue
Sub-Total:
Burns-Pinion Reserve
Eco Evo
Bio Sci
OR
UCOP
Sub-Total:
San Joaquin Marsh Reserve
Mitigation endowments
Eco Evo
Bio Sci
UCOP
OR (UCOP?)
Sub-Total:
Ecological Preserve
Eco Evo
Bio Sci
OR
UCOP
Sub-Total:
Greenhouse
Eco Evo
Bio Sci
OR
UCOP
Sub-Total:
Arboretum
Eco Evo
Bio Sci
OR
UCOP
Sub-Total:
Total Revenue:
Current
$25,000
$25,000
$10,000
$25,000
$35,000
$100,000
$100,000
$65,000
$65,000
$456,768
$25,000
$10,000
$2,500
$2,500
$2,500
$2,500
$10,000
$50,000
$50,000
$61,000
$15,768
$231,768

Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center
None
Internet
Ecological Preserve
Landscaping, irrigation system, internet, power to lower area
$0
$5,000
$40,000

Operations and Staffing
$413,054
$387,239
$534,354

Appendix A. UC-Irvine Schools and faculty actively working on transect assets.
Biology
Steve Allison
Matt Bracken
Diane Campbell
Tim Bradley
Peter Bowler
Donovan German
Travis Huxman
Kailen Mooney
Jennifer Martiny
Sergio Rasmann
Ann Sakai
Cascade Sorte
Kathleen Treseder
Steve Weller
Business
Kerry Vandell
Education
Brad Hughes
Sue Marshall
Engineering
Bill Cooper
Diego Rosso
Law
Scott Samuelsen
Brett Sanders
Soroosh Sorooshian
Jasper Vrugt
Alejandro Camacho
Robert Solomon
Physical Sciences
Ellen Druffel
Jay Famiglietti
Michael Goulden
Kathleen Johnson
Social Ecology
Tim Bruckner
David Feldman
Richard Mathew
Social Science
Tom Boellstorff
Julia Elyachar
Mike McBride
Valerie Olson