By Barbara Hale
Public Information
Penn State's research activities increased once again in fiscal 1998 enhancing students' learning opportunities, creating nearly 14,000 jobs, promoting industrial competitiveness and improving the quality of life for Pennsylvanians.
Robert Killoren, director of sponsored programs, said that if research spending from all sources of support are considered, including federal and state funding, private industry, foundations, University infrastructure support and institutional cost sharing, total expenditures for organized research at Penn State reached $374.1 million in fiscal 1998. The comparable figure for fiscal year 1997 was $353.4 million.
"The research and creative activities undertaken by our faculty and students produce a richer learning environment for both undergraduate and graduate students," said Rodney A. Erickson, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School. "These activities also have direct positive effects on virtually all Pennsylvania citizens -- whether or not they or their children attend the University. Research and creative activities at Penn State, ultimately, mean people helping people in basic, personal, life-enhancing ways."
For example, Penn State faculty members and students conduct basic scientific and medical studies of the causes, prevention and cure of human illnesses. They also work in impoverished neighborhoods in Harrisburg, looking for the roots of and reasons and best coping strategies for teenage pregnancy. In cooperation with local health and human service agencies, they are bringing cancer detection and prevention programs to 12 rural, medically underserved Pennsylvania Appalachian communities. In Philadelphia, in cooperation with the Visiting Nurses Association, they are developing a system to remotely monitor the medical condition of homebound diabetes patients. The system is reducing travel time and expense and improving overall medical care by allowing nurses nearly instantaneous access to an individual patient in need.
In the schools, Penn State researchers and their students are developing substance abuse prevention programs for seventh and eighth graders in 10 rural disadvantaged school districts in Blair County. They developed 50 new recipes for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program with lower fat content and moderate use of added salt to improve nutrition for children at 92,000 schools in Pennsylvania and across the nation. They are improving music education by developing new teaching materials, identifying new musical experiences, compiling Internet teaching resources and training music educators. In cooperation with the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletics Association, the Pennsylvania Trainers Association and numerous school districts, they are developing guidelines to help coaches and medical staffs ensure that injured high school athletes do not return to the playing field too soon.
Penn State faculty members and their students are also working in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing in a variety of counties to develop guidelines for the use of community service, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug counseling in criminal sentencing by Pennsylvania judges. They also are examining the issues involved in implementing Pennsylvania's victim restitution law to help ensure that an individual criminal is held accountable to the victim.
Pennsylvania's public trees, drinking water, tornado and earthquake readiness, butterflies, tourism, folklore and elderly all have benefited from Penn State faculty and student research and creative activities, too. There are thousands of projects conducted throughout the Penn State system, Erickson said. The chief funding sources for these activities is the federal government. These funds, the research and the nearly 14,000 jobs the Association of American Universities estimates Penn State research brings, would go to other states if Penn State faculty members and students did not successfully compete for them.
"Penn State research benefits the health of Pennsylvania's economy as well as the personal health and well-being of all our state's people," Erickson said. "It's research by Pennsylvania people for Pennsylvania people."
Last year, Penn State ranked first among Pennsylvania universities in research expenditures; No. 2 in the U.S. in research support from industry, behind only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and 11th in the country in total research expenditures. National Science Foundation data on the latest comparable rankings are expected to be available in December.