Columns:: Federal budget supports several university projects

since 12/15/98

Columns::March 3, 2003

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Campus News

Federal budget supports several university projects

By Tom Jackson
tjackson@uga.edu

The fiscal year 2003 federal budget adopted by Congress in February includes major support for a number of University of Georgia priorities, including funding to construct a new research center at Sapelo Island and restoration of much of a proposed budget cut for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.
Through the initiative of Congressman Jack Kingston, Congress approved $1.5 million toward the construction of the Marine Education and Research Center, part of the UGA Marine Institute. The university’s top federal funding priority for the year, it will include housing for visitors, distance learning capabilities, research laboratories and instruction areas.
“We are indebted to Congressman Kingston for his efforts in securing this project so important to UGA, our Marine Institute and to coastal Georgia,” says President Michael F. Adams. “Likewise, we express our particular gratitude to Congressman Kingston and to Sen. Zell Miller and Congressman Charles Norwood, along with the entire Georgia delegation, for their efforts to restore SREL funding and securing our overall federal budget priorities in a tight budget year.”
The $7 million included in the Energy and Water Bill for SREL is partial restoration of a proposed cut to $5.84 million from last year’s $8 million. President Bush’s fiscal year 2004 budget proposal contains $7.8 million for SREL, which would nearly restore it to the funding level of fiscal year 2002.
An appropriation of $450,000 for the Center for Leadership in Education and Applied Research in Mass Destruction Defense, headed by pharmacy professor Cham Dallas, will further work to develop protocols and educate and train health care professionals in patient treatment in the aftermath of biological, nuclear or chemical attack. This was funded at $650,000 last year.
A plan for a consortium of three UGA international programs to provide training in law, governance and mass media to key professionals in emerging democracies took a step forward. The budget provides a “soft earmark” in the USAID budget, thus urging that the agency give full consideration to the proposal, which involves the International Center for Democratic Governance, the Dean Rusk Center and the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.
Among other major UGA items in the newly approved federal budget:
• $672,000 for the National Beef Cattle Genetic Evaluation, a consortium involving UGA and institutions in New York, Nebraska and Colorado;
• $625,000 for the Wildlife Management and Game Bird Restoration Project of the Warnell School of Forest Resources under the USDA APHIS program;
• $540,000 for the second year of a three-year project to study water-use efficiency in agricultural applications, particularly cotton and peanut crops;
• $400,000 to complete funding of a research cotton micro-gin for the evaluation of cotton fiber in Georgia;
• $300,000 for the Alliance for Food Protection, a consortium of UGA and the University of Nebraska;
• $293,000 to develop innovative water conservation tools for irrigation of vegetable and row crops at the Stripling Irrigation Research Park in Mitchell County. The program ties Web-based tools to the weather station network to produce optimal irrigation schedules.

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