June 18 ceremonies in Dominican Republic mark start of Cornell University Biodiversity Laboratory at Punta Cana

June 18 ceremonies on the Caribbean island
Roger Segelken/News Service
June 18 ceremonies on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola marked the construction start for the new Cornell University Biodiversity Laboratory at Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
plant survey of beach ecosystems
Roger Segelken/News Service
Kevin C. Nixon (center, in sunglasses), an associate professor of botany in Cornell's L.H. Bailey Hortorium, leads students on a plant survey of beach ecosystems along the east coast of Hispaniola June 24, 1999.

Officials from the Dominican Republic and Cornell University will celebrate the groundbreaking for a multipurpose facility -- a biodiversity laboratory for undergraduate students and a distance-learning center for scholars of the Caribbean nation -- in ceremonies set for June 18 in the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic.

High-level officials, including the directors of the departments of Interior and Public Works of the Dominican Republic, are expected to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Representing Cornell will be Daryl B. Lund, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where the university's distance-learning Global Classroom Project is based; William L. Crepet, chair of the L.H. Bailey Hortorium, which will manage the biodiversity laboratory; Eloy Rodriguez, the James A. Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies and leader of student biodiversity studies; Laurie A. Robinson, director of the Cornell Development Office, which negotiated support for the project from the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation; and H. Dean Sutphin, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of the Global Classroom initiative.

Representing the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation will be Cornell alumnus Theodore (Ted) W. Kheel, the noted labor mediator who is an active supporter of distance learning and other programs of the university; Frank R. Rainieri, president and CEO of Grupo Punta Cana and president of the ecological foundation; and designer Oscar de la Renta, also a principal in Grupo Punta Cana and the Punta Cana Beach Resort, which has set aside 1,555 acres of its holdings on the east coast of the Dominican Republic as a nature preserve.

Approximately 10 acres of the Punta Cana Ecological Reserve will be used for the biodiversity laboratory -- distance learning facility. In addition to a field laboratory for examining plants, animals, marine and microbial organisms of the Dominican Republic, the 5,000-square-foot facility will include lodging for Cornell students and faculty and a distance-learning classroom equipped with state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment, including satellite uplink/downlink capabilities.

plant survey of beach ecosystems
Roger Segelken/News Service
Kevin C. Nixon (center, in sunglasses), an associate professor of botany in Cornell's L.H. Bailey Hortorium, leads students on a plant survey of beach ecosystems along the east coast of Hispaniola June 24, 1999.
Designed to catch insects
Roger Segelken/News Service
Designed to catch insects, not keep them out, an entomologists' tent is set up along the east coast of Hispaniola to survey biodiversity of that Caribbean island. From left are David Linhart, senior at Cornell University; Roberto Keller, Cornell graduate student in entomology; Juan Carlos Robles, sophomore; and Illyana Albarran, a Cornell sophomore.

With the facility's completion, expected in January 2000, the Dominican Republic will join Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Honduras as sites of distance-learning programs from Cornell University, said Global Classroom Director Sutphin. Distance-learning technologies allow interactive video and computer communication, via satellite and the Internet, among students and instructors at the university and at sites around the world, Sutphin explained.

The site in the Dominican Republic will allow Cornell's student-researchers to explore the rich biological diversity both ashore and in the waters of the Caribbean island, according to Rodriguez, who has directed similar student explorations in Africa and Central and South America. He noted that Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti, is home to thousands of plant species, including 600 kinds of ferns, some 226 species of birds, more than 285 kinds of butterflies and 134 kinds of reptiles, including four species of marine turtles.

According to Agriculture Dean Lund, the Dominican Republic initiative "combines the best of what Cornell wants to offer: a major opportunity for undergraduate students to be engaged in meaningful research and a base of operations for our distinguished faculty researchers to conduct studies in an area of amazing diversity of plant and animal species."

While the biodiversity laboratory is under construction, students and faculty members in Cornell's first summer biology program in the Dominican Republic will be guests of the Punta Cana Beach Resort. For more than 25 years, the Grupo Punta Cana and its 14,000-acre resort have been dedicated to sustainable tourism, setting standards for environmental sustainability while serving an international clientele, said Rainieri, who is president of the Caribbean Association on Sustainable Tourism.

The biodiversity laboratory will be built at an approximate cost of $500,000 to the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation, a not-for-profit organization endowed by private donations, and it will be leased to the university for $1 a year.

junior Josiah Penlaver emerges from Caribbean waters
Roger Segelken/News Service
Cornell University junior Josiah Penlaver emerges from Caribbean waters off the east coast of Hispaniola during a biodiversity survey of marine organisms in reef ecosystems. The undergraduate is one of 21 students working ashore and below the surface at the newly established Punta Cana laboratory.

Additional start-up funds for the laboratory and distance-learning facility are being provided by Kheel, who had previously offered Punta Cana as the site of an international conference on sustainable food systems and the environment for the Global Classroom Project in

1998 and had underwritten a filmed documentary on sustainable tourism. Kheel subsequently heard Rodriguez speak on biodiversity and undergraduate research at Cornell and realized that Punta Cana would be an ideal site for the university's research and education programs in biodiversity as well as an opportunity to extend distance-learning capabilities.

Kheel is an attorney with the New York City firm Battle Fowler, which specializes in international law. He is the founder and chairman of Prevention and Early Resolution of Conflicts Inc. and a labor mediator for more than 50 years. At Cornell he has served since 1989 on the Advisory Council of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. That school has recognized the generous support from Ted and Ann Kheel by naming the Kheel Center for Labor Management Documentation and Archives for them. In the Dominican Republic, Kheel is chairman of the Board of Directors of Grupo Punta Cana. In the international arena, he is president of Earth Pledge Foundation, an organization dedicated to implementing key recommendations -- including sustainable development -- of the United Nations' 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development.

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