Research dollars hit all-time high

By Amy Geiszler-Jones

WSU faculty and staff had another record-setting year attracting external funding for research, training and service grants and contracts.

The grant and contract total for fiscal year 1999 reached $19.2 million, up a dramatic 15 percent from last fiscal year’s total of $16.7 million.

"This represents a superb performance by our faculty and staff and indicates a great deal of potential for future growth," said Skip Loper, associate vice president for research. "I figured that we would top last year’s total but I wasn’t certain we’d do it this dramatically. I think it’s a very good sign for the future. Not only did we exceed the grant and contract total, but the dollar amount and the number of proposals submitted also were new all-time highs."

This is the sixth consecutive year the research funding total has increased. Since fiscal year 1988, WSU has more than quadrupled its amount of external funding.

Being able to collect the full amount of overhead costs for more grants and being awarded larger, six-figure grants helped WSU set a research record this fiscal year. Faculty in the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences also boosted the total by posting an 80 percent increase in funding. LAS faculty snared more than $5.2 million in grants and contracts this past fiscal year, compared to $2.9 million the previous year.

While WSU has negotiated an indirect cost rate of 46 percent with the federal government, not all granters pay that amount. This past year, however, more granters did agree to pay that amount.

"We saw a nice increase in our overhead income," Loper says. "That’s helpful because we can turn much of that back into investments in equipment and grant matches so that our faculty can pursue more external funding."

A number of WSU faculty collected hefty six-figure grants this year. Among those are:

• $749,000 from the Department of Justice to Andi Bannister for continuation of the Regional Community Policing Training Institute, a program that provides training to police officers in small and mid-sized towns in Kansas and parts of Nebraska. This is a renewable grant.

• $549,984 from the Kansas Health Foundation to psychology professor Greg Meissen for a project designed to help curb drinking by college students

• $521,564 from the National Institute of Mental Health to psychology professor Jim Snyder to study various theories contributing to youth violence and to develop an intervention/early prevention model. This is a renewable grant.

• $295,000 from NASA Langley to John Tomblin with the department of aerospace engineering and the National Institute for Aviation Research to continue his work on determining the physical properties of composite materials and build a database that aircraft manufacturers can use to avoid the costly tests themselves.

• $297,497 from NASA Glenn Research Center and $151,565 from NASA Lewis Research Center to NIAR researchers David Ellis and Michael Papadakis, who is also with the aerospace engineering department, to continue their work into studying icing on airplanes. The larger grant is funding their project to design and build a simulator to train pilots how to handle icing if it forms on the wings or other parts of the aircraft.

Loper says it looks as if WSU will meet its goal of $20 million in research funding by FY 2000. A number of the projects funded this past year are renewable, and the university just secured a $1.1 million contract from Boeing for testing services to be provided by Tomblin.