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As a life-long resident of Schenectady County, Vincent Schaefer was very vocal about preserving the purity of the land and water of the Great Flats Aquifer which provided the drinking water for the majority of the county and once served as very fertile farmland.

In late 1974 Vincent Schaefer began conducting air quality studies in the Shawangunk Moutains of New York, located 90 miles north of New York City, as part of his research at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center. This was his first visit to the Mohonk Preserve, then known as The Mohonk Trust.

As the Atmospheric Sciences Program flourished at the Loomis School, Schaefer and his colleagues decided to expand the students' educational opportunities by offering the summer session in multiple locations across the United States. While Schaefer, as director, would make appearances and coordinate the activities at each site—called field stations—the day-to-day running of each one depended on the talent of the highly reputable scientists Schaefer hired for that purpose. Initially, the field stations were located in New York (Whiteface Mountain), Colorado (Boulder), and Arizona (Flagstaff). Eventually, more sites were added, including Socorro, New Mexico and Rensselaerville, New York. Schaefer's contacts from General Electric and Munitalp played a helpful role in establishing field stations and attracting accomplished staff members for the summer program.

Among Schaefer's most successful ventures via the ASRC was the Yellowstone Field Expeditions. In 1960, Schaefer met with National Park Service members in Wyoming's Grand Tetons to discuss the possibility of leading scientific studies in Yellowstone National Park. Specifically, he was interested in the behavior of supercooled clouds that form in the area of Old Faithful. Clouds and condensation nuclei were still a fascination of Schaefer's long after his G.E. days, and he foresaw many different kinds of scientists—including cloud physicists—gathering at Yellowstone once a year to devote themselves to conducting experiments, making observations, and comparing outcomes.

Schaefer saw research opportunities via the ASRC that promised to have national and even international implications as environmental concerns became more public in the 1960s and 1970s. He was engaged frequently to speak about his research, both to other professionals and to "everyday" people who might be interested in learning more about issues like acid rain or solar energy. He also participated on committees and commissions who were given the responsibility of investigating scientific dilemmas of the day and presenting findings to the government. This subseries contains materials from those speaking engagements, trips, and committees.

This last subseries contains official reports by Schaefer on the activities of the Atmospheric Sciences Program and records its progress as it transforms into the Natural Sciences Institute at the State University of New York, Albany. Some of the reports cover the summer program as a whole, while others focus specifically on field station issues. There are also articles published by current and former students of the program as well as some articles published by Schaefer himself.

Schaefer retained many notebooks kept by the students who participated in the Atmospheric Sciences Program, as well as some of their final papers that detail the projects they worked on for eight weeks. Encouraged by Schaefer to do self-directed experiments, the students kept logs of observations and measurements to aid them in their final reports to staff and peers. A few also sketched illustrations to accompany their notes. Some of the papers in this subseries are final reports of the students' experiments while others are thoughts and reflections on the experience as a whole.

As director of the Loomis School activities, and ultimately as director of research at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York, Albany, Schaefer kept records pertaining to the operation of the program. There are many correspondence files; some are between Schaefer and colleagues while others are between Schaefer and the students from the summer program. Numerous students kept in touch with Schaefer well beyond the years that they participated in the Atmospheric Sciences Program, and many of them became successful professionals in their own right.

The majority of the administrative files consist of correspondence; as director of research and then overall director of the ASRC, Schaefer was in constant contact with administrators of SUNY Albany, local colleagues, and other professionals in the field. There are also documents dealing with budget issues, grant applications, conferences, and operation of the N.S.I. field stations.

The subject files contain documents with enduring value that do not necessarily fit the other ASRC subseries. Researchers will find brochures and schedules from conferences, newsletters from other organizations, and updates on research projects that the ASRC was not officially collaborating with but still held interest for Schaefer.

The Desert Research Institute, or D.R.I., was established in 1959 as part of the University of Nevada (currently called the Nevada System of Higher Education). Their mission calls for a blend of traditional, basic research with interdisciplinary, applied research methods. Although Schaefer did not have a hand in creating the D.R.I., he did act as a consultant for them during his time at the ASRC/SUNY. His Natural Sciences Institute also expanded to include a field station at the D.R.I., so this subseries is a blend of Schaefer's consulting materials as well as applications and curriculum planning for the N.S.I. summer programs.

This subseries is devoted entirely to articles and reports from Schaefer's Munitalp years. Materials cover a range of topics including Project Skyfire, jet stream studies, cloud seeding, particle studies, and research on the relationship between environmental factors and the weather. Since this subseries is comparatively smaller than the reports and publications for General Electric, works by Schaefer and others are mixed together. The files are arranged chronologically, then alphabetically by article/report title if necessary. Folder titles note the author of each work. For Schaefer's writings, the archivist noted if there is a manuscript included with the published copy.

Although Schaefer had administrative duties as director of research, as well as overall director of the ASRC in later years, he still made as much time as possible for conducting his own research. In addition to experiments carried out in New York's Capital Region, he oversaw research at the Whiteface Mountain Field Station and Observatory as well as Flagstaff, Arizona, and led highly successful expeditions in the Yellowstone National Park. His fascination with particle studies continued during his ASRC years, leading to crucial investigations of carcinogens, acid rain, effects of particulate matter on global weather, aerosol studies, and much more. He also took great interest in alternative energy sources, solar energy specifically. Of course, cloud studies and ice-forming nuclei also remained a passion of Schaefer's. This subseries mainly consists of Schaefer's own investigations into those kinds of topics and offers a glimpse of his own notes, calculations, and observations on the subjects of interest to him.

The documents in this subseries are arranged by name of the organization, institution, or person with whom Schaefer was consulting, followed by a brief indication of the topic(s) within. Schaefer consulted for a wide variety of places, including Boeing; Philip Morris; Arthur D. Little, Inc.; the University of Nevada; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and many more. Files include a variety of items such as meeting minutes and reports from organizations Schaefer was working with, company brochures and newsletters, itineraries and vouchers from Schaefer's extensive travels, contract agreements, and correspondence that was not already filed with the letters in subseries #1.

The correspondence in this subseries is a mix of letters received by Schaefer as well as carbon copies of letters sent by him or his secretary, Alice Klopfer. The archivist believes that the filing system used in this subseries was created by Ms. Klopfer and has been preserved accordingly. Most folders are titled by the name of the person or company for whom Schaefer was consulting, but there are also files titled simply by letter of the alphabet—these contain correspondence from sources that were not numerous enough to warrant their own folders, and are identified within each folder by subject.

Since Schaefer was Munitalp's director of research, and Munitalp participated in meteorological projects internationally as well as domestically, Schaefer was constantly in contact with associates all over the globe. The substantial amount of correspondence that he kept from his Munitalp years shows the greatly increased administrative role he held in comparison to his General Electric days.

In addition to serving on the Education Committee of the American Meteorological Society, Schaefer also served on the general council of the AMS. This subseries features documents on the AMS educational films project, correspondence, a few AMS bulletins, and some programs from annual AMS meetings. Although the files do not directly relate to the founding of the Loomis School/NSI, the AMS was responsible for the founding of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the Loomis School in 1959, and the documentation of educational programs found in this subseries foreshadows the creation of those summer sessions.

This subseries includes reports and publications by Schaefer, his colleagues at the ASRC, and colleagues from other institutions who worked closely with Schaefer and occasionally collaborated with the ASRC. Names from the latter group will sound familiar from Schaefer's consulting materials, such as Wendell Mordy and Paul MacCready. Topics range from annual ASRC reports, to solar energy work, to particle studies and more. Some documents are official reprints of articles while others are handwritten manuscripts or typescripts.

The subject files feature a variety of materials that supplement Schaefer's Munitalp research documents, such as ephemera from some of his many travels, conference brochures, and weather research activities of groups not affiliated with Munitalp. This subseries also includes administrative files such as personnel information, grant writing endeavors, and budgeting, which are reflections of Schaefer's role as director of research. There are also photographs of Schaefer and colleagues, non-Skyfire research projects, travels in and out of the United States, and more generic subjects such as research equipment.

General research essentially covers all documents not dealing with Project Skyfire. Since Munitalp's purpose was to aid other organizations with their meteorological experiments, it had many different projects under its wing. Schaefer's papers in this area deal mainly with jet stream and cloud studies and weather modification. One specific example of a new weather modification experiment was Project Shower, which took Schaefer to Hawaii to work with the Pineapple Institute. Some of the files are reminiscent of his work at General Electric since his fascination with particle studies continued well beyond his days in the Knolls Research Laboratory. There are documents and photographs dealing with clouds, precipitation, and atmospheric particles, including some from Mount Washington since Schaefer continued to foster a working relationship with the lab there. Time lapse films of clouds and cloud formations were also a ground-breaking aspect of Schaefer's work with Munitalp.