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Show U. Of U. Stress Need For More Facilities University of Utah research facilities are pressed to their limits by a volume of cooperative coopera-tive research which runs three million dollars annually, Dr. Carl J. Christensen, U. director of cooperative research declared this week. The director released a report which shows the spending on cooperative research at the U. ran approximately 3 million dollars in the last fiscal year. . He said cooperative research, which has mushroomed from a $180,000 a-year program in 1946 to the present, volume- an increase of nearly twenty-fold will cease to grow until the campus has new facilities. "We are getting all the cpn-tracts cpn-tracts we can carry with the present facilities," he said. "Expansion of the program must wait on the construction of the new Engineering Center, the new Medical Center and other research facilities. "Although these new facilities facil-ities will be constructed basically basic-ally for the University's teaching teach-ing program, they also will give new stimulus to cooperative cooper-ative research," he said. A start has been made on the Engneering Center, a four-million-dollar project, under a $775,000 appropriation from the last Legislature. Bids will be called on a small phase of the Medical Center, a $10,000,000 project, very late in 1958 or early in 1959. i Dr. Christensen' s report showed 301 contracts from 71 agencies were current in the ycir ending June 30, 1958. Funds provided for research by the 301 contracts totalled $4,363,000, the director said. Not all of the money, however, how-ever, was spent within the fiscal year. Contract awards are made: to the University at various times in any given year. Some cover research periods of more or less than a year. The amount spent in one fiscal year from the current contracts approaches' three-fourths three-fourths of the total contract money, or, in the case of the last fiscal year, about 3 million, he said. The spending in cooperative research at the TJ. in the previous fiscal year ran 2.7 million dollars, Dr. Christensen said. No state funds are appropriated approp-riated for the University's cooperative co-operative research program. Money for contract research comes almost entirely from private and federal government govern-ment grants, Dr. Christensen said. At the same time, the U. also benefits from non-contract research grants from Utah's Uniform School Fund. These funds may be freely programmed program-med by the University, while the contract research funds are confined to contract projects, ' largely jn medical, physical and biological sciences and engineering. The contract grants, which are the backbone of the Unversity's graduate program in the sciences, cover more than the research labor itself. They help the University purchase pur-chase valuable scientific equipment equip-ment and maintain the research facilities, he gaid. |