UCSB the Beneficiary of $36 Million in Economic Recovery Funds

More than 40 research projects at the university have received grant awards

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, presents a ceremonial check to UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang for the $36 million the university has received in economic stimulus money. Art Gossard, vice chancellor of academic personnel, and Pierre Wiltzius, Worster dean of science, also attended Monday's news conference announcing the grant awards
Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, presents a ceremonial check to UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang for the $36 million the university has received in economic stimulus money. Art Gossard, vice chancellor of academic personnel, and Pierre Wiltzius, Worster dean of science, also attended Monday’s news conference announcing the grant awards. (Giana Magnoli / Noozhawk photo)

By Giana Magnoli, Noozhawk Staff Writer | Published on 09.28.2009

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UCSB is on its way to another year of multimillion-dollar grant funding with the receipt of $36 million in economic stimulus money.

More than 40 research projects have received various amounts of funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with a new Center on Energy Efficient Materials leading the pack with $19 million.

The university typically pulls in about $180 million per year in outside funding, according to Michael Witherell, vice chancellor for research.

“The year we’re in now, I think we’ll beat that,” he said Monday during a news conference announcing the grant awards.

About half of research money goes to salaries of support staff, which includes graduate and post-doctorate students and other researchers, he said. Faculty members working on projects are paid by state funds, and the rest of the grant money goes toward equipment or other expenses.

CEEM works with energy-efficient materials, and current projects include solar panels, thermoelectric technology, efficient lighting and energy storage, said Art Gossard, vice chancellor of academic personnel.

Many of the university’s past Nobel Prizes and Millenium Prize have been related to materials research, he said. All of the grant money was given upfront, so equipment can be purchased early.

Other projects that received money ranged from computer science to psychology, but all were highly science and research-based.

“Stimulus money tends to be for things that are more hard-wired into science and technology,” communications director George Yatchisin said.

Investing in UCSB’s researchers leads to patents and the creation of local companies, chancellor Henry Yang said Monday. There are many more proposals in the pipeline, he said.

He thanked Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, who is an alumna of UCSB, for her support of the university and higher education.

The funds will provide a ripple effect that will support research for decades, Capps said during Monday’s news conference. By providing scientists and researchers with the tools they need, the money can create jobs right away and help build something long term, she said.

UCSB’s CalTeach program received $900,000 in funds, and expects to produce 145 highly qualified science and math teachers during the next five years, said Pierre Wiltzius, Worster Dean of Science. The program gives scholarships to students seeking credentials in science and math, and requires graduates to work for at least two years in schools with high needs, he said.

The announcement of the federal grants comes less than a week after the systemwide Day of Action by University of California campuses, which protested fee hikes and cutbacks to faculty and staff.

“Our budget situation is very, very difficult,” Yang said.

However, the millions of dollars in research money can never be used to supplement faculty salaries or anything else.

Witherell said the spending of competitive grants is meticulously tracked by the government. Public universities have five budgets, and there are firewalls between each one to prevent money for one purpose being spent for another.

“The role of the grant process isn’t to replace what the state’s responsibility is,” Capps said, adding that the government needs to make educational institutions a priority.

Click here to view a complete list of UCSB projects that have received ARRA funding.

— Noozhawk staff writer Giana Magnoli can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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» Thats our money wrote on 09.28.09 @ 08:45 PM

Obama is a bad leader—these funds are the taxpayers debts passed onto our kids and grandchilden—Liberals at work killing our country—this is not FREE money dummy’s—

» E Meredith wrote on 09.29.09 @ 03:52 AM

It’s interesting how “conservative” leaders continue to gloss over the fact that national debt is their own responsibility. Time and time again, the GOP destroys the economy, and then Democrats come and and patch it together again. GOP leaders walk away with millions in their pockets, and leave their misguided, falsely informed followers making ridiculous pot shots at the people who are trying to stitch the economic system back together.

Thanks to those in this administration who are creating jobs for everyone, even those people who work in beleaguered California Universities. Those same universities were working so well, supplying public education at good prices, that they became the focus of GOP ire. The GOP apparently does not want the riffraff educated. Is it because working class folks with research skills may question why the money continually winds up in GOP pockets?

President Obama is using tried and true methods that will help us recover from the leadership debacle of the past 8 years.

» Local wrote on 09.29.09 @ 06:28 AM

Money provided for research at institutions such as UCSB are an excellent investment in our future. Not only will it create new jobs but many of products, findings, ideas and inventions have dramatically improved our standard of living. We should eliminate the waste and overspending in our such places in our government as the military and medicare to pay for this.

So now it is Liberal to invest in research. Why do the people on the right only complain about this kind of spending but never a word about the past 8 years of no bid contracts for military business that wasted billions or the giveaway to the drug companies of hundreds of billions for not allowing medicare to negotiate prices?

» Well look at that wrote on 09.29.09 @ 07:05 AM

Lois went and stole some of our money so she could give it to the academics. “half of research money goes to salaries of support staff”. I bet they will all be voting for Lois.

» Taxpayer wrote on 09.29.09 @ 08:00 AM

If you look at the picture Capps signed the check so it must be from her personal account and not from taxpayers.

» Neil wrote on 09.29.09 @ 11:41 AM

UCSB, like all UC, is a mafia criminal organization.
Its Confucian conformist Chancellor and other administrative officers are unaccountable, unelected, unethical and criminal.

Outrageously, they have at their disposal an armed mafia thug-police force and libelous propaganda machine accountable to nobody elected. They actively seek to sabotage and destroy those that dare criticize them.

Propaganda is the main product of UC that strives continually to criminally con California citizens that they produce anything of significance worth being taxed to pay for.

UC is a dinosaur that fails to adapt to the times by utilizing 21st Century communications technology to liberate its student slave suckers from stultifying stationary bricks and mortar campuses into the very possible stimulating trek around the world while pursuing their degrees at reduced cost and increased enrollment.

UCSB faculty and staff have committed treason. There is no university anywhere that has cooperated and participated more in the orchestration of Zionist 9/11 homicides. There is no university better qualified to challenge the sham conclusion of a corrupted 9/11 Commission. No university in the history of the World has more disgracefully failed to fulfill its responsibility to the human species and TRUTH more than UCSB. UCSB is utterly contemptible and its complete destruction is honorably justifiable.

» Liberals spending your money wrote on 09.29.09 @ 09:09 PM

They love to tax and spend your money—unions shills all of them—no shame—

Break the union corruption now—our liberls are puppets—

» Fiscal conservative wrote on 09.30.09 @ 07:25 AM

“Blah blah liberals blah blah treason blah blah blah taxes”

Wake up people. The economy is in the toilet. If you’re going to stimulate the economy, the best way to do it is through investment in education and technology. Not only will a lot of this money flood into the local economy in the short run, but the knowledge gained, patents earned and business started will benefit SB in the long run. It’s an investment. If it goes right, you end up with more coming in that went out - that is almost like free money!

» Fiscally Conservative wrote on 10.01.09 @ 06:50 AM

Pump all the money you want into research, while punishing businesses with taxes and it will go nowhere without a business to develop, market, sell the ideas. UCSB does not produce a product or service that directly provides income or revenue! It is a consumer of revenue not a producer! When will businesses, the true producers, get a single dime of “recovery and reinvestment” money? Answer - never, because capitalism is not a liberal cause. Only education and the environment.

 

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