Created in 1895 and located on the six-and-a-half acre Gibraltar Island of Lake Erie's Put-in-Bay, Stone Lab is the nation's oldest freshwater biological field station. The laboratory offers college-level courses each summer with faculty and students, not only from Ohio State, but from all over the country. Many people say that the Stone Laboratory experience really changed their lives. Our students are literally all over the country having an impact on science education and on the environment. Stone Lab also provides a facility for year- round research. Most recently, our Ohio Sea Grant College program has been having a huge impact on Lake Erie-both on the water quality and on the economic development in the region. Stone Lab also provides a custom-designed aquatic workshop for grades 4 through adult, with over 5,000 participants annually. The students go out to the island, they spend the night on the island, they go out on our research boats, they pull trawls, they collect bottom samples, they collect plankton samples, they go back into our laboratory and learn how to use microscopes--dissect fish--it's really a hands-on experience. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin that said "Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand." That's what we do at Stone Laboratory. New buildings are going up, old buildings are being renovated. When you visit or work on the Ohio State campus, it's impossible lately to miss the road and building construction in nearly every area of campus. Housing a materials and fabrication laboratory, library and roof garden, Knowlton Hall will be the new home to Ohio State's Knowlton School of Architecture The new Knowlton School of Architecture is going to be a great tool for architecture students. It encourages student and faculty interaction, in that you have to pass through the floor that houses the faculty offices in order to get to your studio. New facilities for Physics, Biomedical Research, and the Ross Heart Hospital are all well underway, as are renovations of Page and Hagerty Halls, which will make way for the new John Glenn Institute and World Media and Culture Center. One thing that's important to me is to bring students into the institute, bring them into the building where they can interact in small groups with faculty, with policymakers like Senator Glenn, who's very involved in our program, with faculty who visit from other universities. Projects are in various stages of planning or activity at Ohio State's four regional campuses, ten farms, and even Stone Lab on Lake Erie. They're projects which represent a carefully considered investment driven by Ohio State's Academic Plan--investment which will propel our academic programs and research activity to new heights for years to come.