Stephen Bollens and Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens, both science professors at Washington State University Vancouver, brought their daughters, Laela, 9, and Arianna, 6, to the center in an east Vancouver business park.

As they watched the kids happily experiment with ash and form volcanoes out of clay, they pondered the possibility of someday having the Northwest’s foremost volcano research center even more handy — five miles across town, on WSU’s sprawling campus in Salmon Creek.

“It would be wonderful,” Stephen Bollens said.

Some day, it might happen.

Although parties make it clear that discussions are only in the preliminary stage, university and federal officials have been exploring the possibility of moving Vancouver’s USGS outpost onto the WSU campus.

The USGS first established a local presence in Vancouver in the months before the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Named for David A. Johnston, a young USGS geologist who died in the eruption of May 18, 1980, the center has occupied its current space in east Vancouver’s Columbia Tech Center since late 2001.

WSU began offering classes on its 351-acre campus in 1996, and it has big plans for growth.

Lynn Valenter, the school’s vice chancellor for finance and operations, said the current master plan calls for the campus to expand from 390,000 square feet of building space and 1,800 full-time equivalent students to 1.2 million square feet accommodating 9,000 full-time students within 15 years.

Whether a new Cascades Volcano Observatory fits into those plans depends on many factors yet to be negotiated — the cost of a new building, who would bear the expense, and the logistical peculiarities of housing a federal research and emergency-response facility on the university campus.

“There are very good reasons why this would make sense,” Valenter said. “But there are also some pretty significant challenges to making this happen.”

Stephen Bollens, director of science programs at WSU-Vancouver, said he hopes those challenges can be overcome.

“This is potentially one of the biggest things to happen to the Vancouver campus,” he said. “In terms of the potential, it’s fabulous.”

Bollens said a world-class research facility located on the WSU campus would lend considerable prestige to the university science program while enhancing research partnerships already under way. It could also jump-start new academic disciplines, such as an anticipated degree in earth system science.

“It’s not just geology or volcanology, it’s a whole range of science and engineering disciplines that would benefit,” Bollens said.

From the USGS scientists’ point of view, such a move would swap a nondescript business park for an academic setting where scientists working in the observatory could peek up from their desks and observe at least three volcanoes directly — St. Helens, Adams and Hood.

A move only would occur after the volcano observatory’s current 10-year lease expires in 2012.

Cynthia Gardner, the observatory’s scientist in charge, emphasized that the tech center has been a “very good” fit for the 50 to 60 scientists who work out of Vancouver. Yet, having the USGS facility on the WSU campus would be an “ideal” situation that’s worth exploring, she said.

Now is the time to begin those conversations, she said.

“If it didn’t look like it was likely to happen, we could shake hands and start thinking about renewing the lease here,” Gardner said.

Discussions have been under way for the past six to nine months, although officials noted that it’s a long way from a done deal. WSU Vancouver campus officials would need to run it through administrators at the main campus in Pullman and, ultimately, take a formal proposal to the university’s board of regents.

In the 1990s, a similar discussion fizzled.

So, rather than moving to the Washington State’s Salmon Creek campus, the USGS moved from an old office in Vancouver Heights to the bigger, better-wired and earthquake-proof location in the business park off 164th Avenue.

Scientists and university officials nonetheless acknowledge the tantalizing possibility of establishing a state-of-the-art earth science center at WSU Vancouver.

“It would be just an ideal situation,” Gardner said. “Truly a permanent home for us.”