Stony Brook University is a public sea- and space-grant research university. It offers a wide selection of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Since its establishment in Stony Brook, the university has expanded to include more than 200 major buildings with a combined area of more than 11 million gross square feet across 1,454 acres of land. In 2001, SUNY Stony Brook was elected to the prestigious Association of American Universities, joining four private universities (Cornell, Columbia, NYU, and Rochester) and one public university (SUNY Buffalo) elsewhere in its state. It is also a member of the larger Universities Research Association for which its president, Samuel Stanley, is a council president. The university owns Stony Brook Medicine, co-manages the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and has four business incubators across the region. The university has a regional economic impact of over $7.2 billion annually, accounting for nearly 4% of economic activity in eastern Long Island. Stony Brook University was founded in 1957 in Oyster Bay as State University College on Long Island.