How did Old Dominion go about constructing and purchasing the Slover?
In the university s first capital campaign in 1995, the department received $1.3 million to build the vessel. We formed a ship committee to look at possible designs in 1998. We saw a similar ship in the Gulf of Maine the Gulf Challenge owned by the University of New Hampshire. We hired a marine architect, the Gulf Challenge designer and the shipyard that built it to build the Slover in 2000. It was built in Somerset, Mass. Construction began in October 2001, and we accepted it in September 2002. We specified what we wanted on board based upon faculty input. We took the contract the University of New Hampshire had for the Gulf Challenge and modified it. We also received $140,000 from the National Science Foundation for new equipment, and we matched that grant, so there is about one-quarter of a million dollars in new equipment on the boat. What types of high-tech equipment are on the Slover? We have three Global Positioning Systems. We have a profiling system that can measure vertical p
