Members of an ORU come from more than one department and normally from more than one school, college or division. The center coordinates and administers several research and publication programs that further the study of agricultural and natural-resource history. Research activities include studies of comparative farm policy, migration and agricultural development, the history of farm land values, the agricultural-environmental border, rural international borderlands in the Americas, the causes and consequences of agricultural mechanization and other sources of productivity improvements in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the impact of scientific research. Well-equipped facilities feature running seawater in two classrooms and most laboratories, a marine science library, lecture hall, housing facilities, greenhouses, experimental freshwater system for anadromous fish studies, and a dive locker and air station.
Faculty teach a number of undergraduate courses during the academic year and summer session.
The Bodega Marine Reserve, part of the UC Natural Reserve System, is 362 acres of remarkably diverse habitats, including an excellent rocky intertidal zone, sand beaches, saltmarsh, lagoon tidal flats, freshwater marsh, coastal prairie and dunes. The reserve also administers adjacent subtidal sand and rock habitats in a marine life refuge. Areas of research include a broad spectrum of field studies of plants and animals in coastal marine, intertidal and terrestrial ecosystems. Research programs include behavioral and neurobiology, developmental and reproductive biology, respiratory diseases, virology and immunology, genetics and a variety of biomedical collaborative research projects. Self-sustaining breeding colonies of macaques are available for study of spontaneously occurring disorders.