LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) — Florida Gulf Coast University's Vester Field Station is back in action after enduring a series of challenges.
The facility was battered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Hurricane Ian in 2022, and the many storms that followed, like Helene and Milton in 2024.
Now, students and staff have returned for good, and the station looks better than ever.
"We had water up about this high, 11 feet here, and, you know, everything on the first floor was just destroyed," said Mike Parsons, the director of Vester Field Station. "We were left with nothing, no power, no water, and just wondering what the plan was moving forward. Was FGCU going to reinvest and rebuild Vester? Would people come back? Would we have the classes back? So, there were really a lot of unknowns, whether or not we'd be able to come back. So, the fact that here we are is really good."
Vester Field Station has been restored with the assistance of the Collier Community Foundation, which helped rebuild it to better withstand future storms.
"I'll tell you they took that $150,000 and have stretched it beyond my wildest dreams of how many pieces they were able to replace with that amount of money," said Eileen Connolly-Keesler, President and CEO of the foundation.
This restoration allows students to conduct critical environmental research once more.
"One of the things that we're doing a lot out of this facility and up and down the coast is community resilience," said Greg Tolley, the dean of FGCU's water school. "We're specifically interested in how communities bounce back after hurricanes and making sure that we find out better ways to live on the landscape, so it's not such a challenge when one of these things comes through, because the projections indicate that it's going to get much worse before it gets better over time."
Students like William Armiger, a senior at FGCU. He shared his enthusiasm about the facility's return to full functionality.
"Vester has now been a building and not a construction zone for a year now," said Armiger. "When I was a freshman here, my freshman fall semester, Ian hit. So, Vester got destroyed by Ian, we built back, and Milton and Helene came through, and then now, it’s just super fun to be able to have everything here and operational."
But what Armiger's most excited for? Being back out in the field.
"Now, instead of going to the main campus, like we used to, have to run all our samples and do the science, now we can take the samples back here, have it stored here with the refrigerators, the freezers, and then be able to run the samples and take the data and compile it here at Vester," he said.
Although the past few years have not gone as planned for Armiger, he looks forward to finishing his last year strong at the newly improved Vester Field Station.
