UConn’s Avery Point Marine Sciences Building to be Renamed Honoring Lowell Weicker

The Marine Sciences Building at the University of Connecticut’s Avery Point campus on the Connecticut shoreline will be renamed to honor former Connecticut Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.

Weicker, whose public service spans several decades in Connecticut and Washington, D.C., supported UConn and its marine sciences research.  UConn’s Department of Marine Sciences is located on the shores of Long Island Sound at the Avery Point campus.  The UConn Board of Trustees voted unanimously this week to approve the name change, which will be made official later this fall with an event at the Avery Point campus.

“Lowell, as you know, was a champion for marine sciences and a champion for Avery Point. The idea that the Marine Sciences Building would become the Lowell P. Weicker Jr. Marine Sciences Building means a lot,” said Gov. Ned Lamont, who joined the trustees meeting to support the proposal. “His proud legacy of public service in Connecticut and the nation as well as his courage in the face of major challenges on behalf of his state and his constituents is such that the University of Connecticut should name a major facility in his honor,” the resolution adopted by the Board of Trustees noted.

Weicker, now 89, is a graduate of Yale University and University of Virginia Law School, and started his career in public service as a Republican member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1963-69, also serving concurrently as Greenwich’s First Selectman for four of those years.  He served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives, then was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970, a position he held through 1989.

Weicker advocated for oceanic research, helping to establish UConn as a national Sea Grant institution and a national Undersea Research Center. As governor, he also helped secure a $50 million grant for the Avery Point Marine Sciences building that will now bear his name. The building will not be the first UConn facility to honor the former Governor: the R/V Lowell Weicker, a research vessel waschristened with his name in 2006. That vessel is equipped with laboratory space and other amenities to aid UConn’s research into the coastal environment of the Long Island Sound.

Faculty, staff and students within the department carry out cutting-edge research in coastal oceanography using cross-disciplinary approaches, with strong foundations in biological, chemical and physical oceanography, according to university officials.  Both undergraduate and graduate degrees are offered.  All of the department’s faculty are engaged in active research programs that are supported by competitive grants from state and federal funding agencies.  Most recently (prior to the pandemic) the UConn Coastal Studies Program included 75 students, mostly from across New England. 

“I had the opportunity and good fortune to work with Gov. Weicker back in the 1990s … as Gov. Lamont says, this is of great interest to him,” Trustee Thomas Ritter, a former state legislator and House Speaker, said of Weicker’s work to promote marine sciences research. “This is a very appropriate tribute to an excellent governor and someone who did a lot for the State of Connecticut in so many ways, but especially in this.”

Weicker was known as an outspoken and independent-minded politician, traits that were evident during his gubernatorial term when he advocated the establishment of a state income tax in Connecticut to address major state budget problems, for which he earned the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Among his accomplishments in the U.S. Senate were serving on the Senate Watergate Committee, sponsoring the Protection and Advocacy for the Mentally Ill Act in 1985, and introducing legislation in 1988 that would become the Americans with Disabilities Act.

 “Let’s face it – he’s one cantankerous son of a gun, but he’s also made some tough choices along the way and personally speaking I think the state is better for it,” Lamont said.