SERI is celebrating its 30th year

In 1995, Seth Tuler and Tom Webler met in Western Massachusetts to discuss how they could kickstart their academic careers. Tom had just returned from a postdoc in Switzerland and Seth had recently completed his doctorate and a fellowship in Stuttgart Germany. They had just won an NSF grant to study public participation in the Northern Forest Lands Study. That grant came through the University Albany - SUNY. As adjunct researchers, SUNY offered no offices - only grant management. In return SUNY took an eye popping percentage of the grant funds. Seth suggested starting their own nonprofit. They reached out to mentors Tom Dietz and Paul Stern and together agreed to form SERI and to make it a place where we could do interesting research together. In its 30 years of existence, SERI has never been without funding.