Campus Connection

On March 13, 2008 a news release announced that the institutes that comprise the University System of Maryland (USM) received $1.08 billion in research grants from private, federal and state agencies. Research funding increased by a record 10.9% in 2007 over the previous year, system officials said. Among the work supported by these private and public grants are scientific and medical research, academic scholarships and public service projects.

USM Chancellor, William E. Kirwan said, “Not only do we continue to draw funds for research to our region, we stimulate invention and entrepreneurship, provide a skilled workforce, and give Maryland the edge in the global knowledge economy. Without world-class universities, labs, and faculty, we could not have drawn the amount of research funding that we have seen during the last several years.”

Almost all the universities in the USM received increased external funding in 2007, with University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) seeing a 8.1 percent increase; 10.1 percent at Towson University; 4.6 percent for University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); a tremendous 30.7 percent for University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI); and 16.5 percent at University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP).

However, the major hubs of research in the system—UMB, UMBC, UMCP, UMBI and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science—received the major chunk of funding ($955 million out of $1 billion) in fiscal year 2007.

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