Fulbright Faculty Set Record-Breaking Year in Federal Funding

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Faculty in Fulbright College at the University of Arkansas won $27,408,401 in grants from state and national funding agencies during the 2003-04 fiscal year, nearly doubling last year's total of $14,308,520. Sponsoring agencies ranged from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Park Service.

Their success helped fuel a rise in the total extramural funding for the University of Arkansas, up to $63 million from the previous year's $48 million.

"One important measure of faculty strength and of a university's academic reputation is success in winning grants from major government agencies such as the National Science Foundation," said Donald Bobbitt, dean of Fulbright College. "Program directors at these agencies make awards based on the potential impact of the research, whether it will benefit society by leading to new knowledge, improved medical treatments or technological breakthroughs."

Among the largest grants were $2.2 million from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to physicists Greg Salamo, Min Xiao, Laurent Bellaiche and Huaxiang Fu for research in nanoscience and $6,321,758 in new and ongoing grants from the Arkansas Department of Human Services to the School of Social Work for Academic Partnerships in Public Child Welfare.

Working with a consortium of universities across Arkansas, the School of Social Work is leading the effort to reform child welfare services in the state. The initiative includes educational support for undergraduate and graduate social work students who make a commitment to fill positions in Division of Children and Family Service offices across the state when they graduate. The partnership also provides ongoing consultation, mentoring and training for current frontline child welfare workers and their supervisors.

The Department of Biological Sciences secured its largest grant ever, $2.075 million from the NSF to Fred Spiegel and Steve Stephenson for the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory, a project to catalog all members of the Eumycetozoan species, more commonly known as slime molds.

The year's total also includes funding for ongoing major research projects such as the Center for Protein Structure and Function, which received $1.94 million from the National Institutes of Health. Headed by Francis Millett and Roger Koeppe, the center was established in October 2000 through a $9.6 million grant from the NIH. More than 50 students and 22 faculty from three departments work together in the center to develop innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to the study of protein structure and function. The knowledge they create could lead to improvements in health care.

Brent Smith in sociology also received continued funding of $343,885 from the National Institute of Justice and $573,349 from the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute to support his study of the behaviors and patterns of terrorists before they strike and to create a national database of terrorist incidents.

Fulbright faculty are engaged in an wide-ranging variety of research programs, from understanding the nature of introspection and self-knowledge to designating important bird areas in Western Arkansas, preserving ancient forests in the Southern United States, treating diabetes among the elderly and using nanocrystals in solution to screen for prostate cancer.

"In Fulbright College, we strive for a balance between research and teaching. The idea of the integrated teacher-scholar derives from the belief that teachers take the knowledge they gain from research into the classroom, directly benefiting their students. Research can be the catalyst for new ideas and inspiration," said Bobbitt, who also serves as associate dean of research.