£6m+ teaching development at SAMS

The Scottish Association of Marine Science establishment at Dunstaffnage, north of Oban, was built as a research facility, seeing its signature buildings completed in 1994.

The success of SAMS, more a cap than a feather for Argyll, has brought its own challenges.

One of 13 academic partners in Scotland’s UHI Millennium Institute and Collaborative Centre of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, SAMS has developed teaching courses to graduate and postgraduate level in marine science.

These run alongside its internationally respected research which includes work related to marine renewable energies. The difficulty has been that its buildings were never conceived of as supporting a teaching provision.

So when Argyll College moved from its own relatively recent teaching base across the road (to the Glenshellach Business Park on the south side of Oban), SAMS bought the premises. It has commissioned Barr Construction to build a new two storey extension which will provide teaching facilities. Barr are  now onsite and have started ground preparation.

The artist’s drawing above, of the new teaching facility, is looking from the back beach behind the current Argyll College building.

The light grey structure in the background on the left is one of the existing SAMS buildings. The low foreground structure in the left half is the existing Argyll College building. The front half of this will become an ocean discovery and exhibition centre. The large building taking up the right half of the image is the ‘extension’ to Argyll College – to which it will be attached. This will house most of the teaching facilities including canteen, library, computer room, lecture and seminar rooms, laboratories, and student study rooms.

The entire development, including the purchase of the Argyll College building, will cost over £6M and is funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (£2.382M), the European Regional Development Fund (£2.265M) and the Scottish Funding Council (£1.424M).

Professor Laurence Mee, Director of SAMS, explains the rationale for the new development: ‘Scotland’s seas provide a major potential for developing a stronger marine-based economy.

‘We have much of the necessary knowledge and there is willingness to engage but there is a significant skills gap. We will therefore expand both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and start offering shorter courses to support professional development.

‘We hope to attract up to 800 people to our courses by the middle of the decade. A dedicated teaching facility is a critical step in implementing this strategy’.

The new building must be completed by the end of 2010 as SAMS and the other partners in UHI Millennium Institute continue to work towards the creation of a university in and for the Scottish highlands and islands.

The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) is one of the UK’s leading independent marine research institutes. Based here in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland, its 140 staff research climate change, marine renewable energy, sustainable use of the marine environment, mitigations to resource extraction and the Arctic system.

SAMS also develops innovative technology solutions to ocean observation, exploitation and conservation.

This development is very good news for Argyll as well as for SAMS itself.  The establishment plays a serious high level role in marine science researches into matters of the greatest contemporary  interest and concern. The addition to this of a specialist teaching facility will not only offer  extended opportunities to Argyll’s talented young people but it will bring other very able students and staff to Argyll, contributing to the area’s economic development.

As Professor Mee said, Argyll’s extensive and varied coastal environments are a rewarding and fitting context for this organisation, contributing significantly to both internal and external perspectives on the area.