The National Science Foundation awarded a grant of $1.7 million to Middlebury College that provided funding for a new research vessel for use in science courses and student-faculty research on Lake Champlain. The new boat, the R/V David Folger pictured above at dock in Bellingham, Washington, was completed in the spring of 2012. It is scheduled to arrive in Lake Champlain in the summer of 2012. It replaces the R/V Baldwin, a 32-foot Maine lobster boat that Middlebury bought in 1985 and retrofitted for research and teaching.