The Romberg Tiburon Campus, the only marine science lab on the San Francisco Bay and a research campus of San Francisco State University, is beginning to wind down and shift operations to the main campus amidst budget cuts.
The closure will “disrupt millions of dollars of research grants from NSF, Coastal Conservancy, NOAA, EPA — there’s millions of dollars of grants,” said Dr. Carmen Domingo, Dean of the College of Science and Engineering.
“It hasn’t been self-sustaining in terms of the finances,” according to SFSU Provost Amy Sueyoshi. “Before, when we had more students, we were able to subsidize more — we had more flexibility, financial flexibility to subsidize it. But that’s no longer the case, particularly with our declining enrollment as well as the California state budget cuts.”
The closure comes after years of discussions and efforts to keep it afloat.
“We’ve had a number of administrators look at it,” Dr. Sueyoshi said. “We formed a committee to look at it. We’ve had folks in academic resources, as well as our CFO, study the situation. And the president, more recently, has been involved with our budget difficulties since she basically started at [SF] State. We’ve also consulted with the Chancellor’s office to see what they think about the situation and then obviously, we’ve been in communication with the local community as well to just let folks know the kinds of difficulties we’re facing. We have faculty, Kathy Boyer in particular at EOS, which is the Estuary & Ocean Science Center, who’s been writing grants to try to keep RTC financially sustainable.”
Dr. Katharyn Boyer is the interim executive director of the EOS Center located at the Romberg Tiburon Campus.

(Neal Wong / Golden Gate Xpress)
In a message on the EOS Center’s website, Dr. Boyer wrote that EOS Center researchers in Tiburon conduct studies in the estuary ecosystem using small boats. They also simulate bay conditions with their flow-through baywater system to reveal ecological interactions, and engage students and community members in shoreline surveys and experiments. They examine samples in their laboratories and use their findings to support conservation and management decisions.
Dr. Andrew Chang, who heads the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center West team, said that the campus’ location provides easy access to sites around the bay and the facilities to research what allows invasive species to thrive and how to protect and conserve native communities.
“The geographic location and unique facilities — as the only marine lab on San Francisco Bay — along with the unique collection of faculty, staff and students at EOS Center were a key factor in our deciding to create a satellite lab here 25 years ago, and have played a central role in our success.”
Dr. Domingo says that while the EOS Center will move its operations to SFSU’s main campus, estuary research like that might no longer be possible as the university continues to reduce expenditures.
The closure of the campus will allow SFSU to expend approximately $1 million less per year, according to SFSU spokesperson Robert King.
SFSU is facing a $20.7 million reduction in state funding, on top of a $13.9 million structural deficit and a 5% budget reduction for 2025-26 as part of the California State University reallocation plan, according to an email sent by SFSU President Lynn Mahoney to faculty in December.
“The main campus is going through challenges because of the governor’s allocation to the CSU system,” Dr. Domingo said. “So it’s this ripple effect — if the governor doesn’t allocate enough money to the CSU system, each of the campuses are being forced to make terrible decisions. And so, this seems to be one of them. I still think there’s a lot of details that we still have to understand given the implications of what the center does, but yeah, it’s a challenging time.”

The campus site began as a village inhabited by Coast Miwok, a group of indigenous people, before becoming a coaling station, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration document. Then, the site was used to manufacture cables for the Golden Gate Bridge, according to a story by Xpress Magazine. After that, the land became a U.S. Navy base during World War II before being acquired by SFSU in 1978.
“Unfortunately, many of the facilities had deteriorated significantly, leaving them in an unusable condition,” according to a statement provided by SFSU to Golden Gate Xpress. “As maintenance costs and budget challenges intensified, the financial realties at RTC reached a level which created significant obstacles for the university to continue operations of the satellite location.”
The statement also says very few students, faculty and staff will be directly impacted by the planned, phased closure.
“We haven’t had regularly scheduled undergraduate classes out there for a very long time or to the best of our knowledge,” Dr. Sueyoshi said.
She also said there have been graduate courses there in the past but not currently.
Dr. Sueyoshi said none of the three tenure-track faculty or the single lecturer at the campus will be laid off, instead being relocated to SFSU’s main campus. However, it’s not clear what will happen to some associated researchers, nine state-funded staff and eight grant-funded staff since they’re not paid by the university.
The statement provided by the university said that a master’s program in Estuary Science was offered there but discontinued in academic year 2023-2024 due to low enrollment.
According to Dr. Domingo, many people found out about the closure today and there are numerous agencies and programs involved with the campus. It’s not immediately clear how exactly the closure will happen, other than it being in multiple phases.

On the closure of the Romberg Tiburon Campus, Dr. Chang said he feels “Gutted, and yet I feel a great sense of resolve. Kathy Boyer has an incredible amount of creativity and drive and leadership, and I wouldn’t count EOS Center out just yet. Hemingway wrote that one could go bankrupt in two ways: slowly and then quickly. Remote research stations are in a similar boat, so to speak. They sink slowly, then quickly. In many ways, the writing has been on the wall for some years now without the ability to get greater support from campus or the CSU system, or to more easily advocate for greater community support. But sometimes, the notice of just how dire a situation is can be what spurs folks into action, so we will see how things play out and will do our best to support our colleagues.”
Dr. Chang also said that the SERC West program would relocate elsewhere in the Bay Area when the campus closes.
“Our program is entirely soft money — that is, funded by competitive grants and contracts – and is in a decent position at the moment, so I am confident that we will continue with our work,” Dr. Chang said. “But it will be very, very difficult to match the opportunities and benefits provided by the central location and colleagues at the EOS Center. If we need to move, we will miss the location and facilities, and especially the people we have collaborated with for 25 years to generate critical scientific knowledge about this bay and this coastline.”
It was not immediately clear what would happen to the facilities of the San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve that are based at the campus.
Dr. Boyer has not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.