Colorado State University surpasses $300M in research expenditures

CSU research expenditures topped off at more than $300 million in 2010, ranking CSU in the top 3 percent of institutions without a medical school for research expenditures.

“Colorado State University is a research university,” said Brad Bohlander, spokesman for the university. “Everything from engineering to biomedical science (research is done). It really spans over just about everything we do.”

CSU is nationally ranked 15 out of 554 institutions without a medical school for research expenditure dollars and in the top 10 percent of all research universities.

“As a result of their productivity in the laboratory, Colorado State University researchers are initiating record invention disclosures,” said Bill Farland, vice president for Research.

CSU’s top federal sponsors include annually:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which provides $53 million,
• Health and Human Services, which provides CSU $50.5 million, and
• The National Science Foundation, which provides $31.9 million.

Current projects the university is working on include clean energy products and agricultural research.

Grant awards went from $274.3 million last year to $285.6 million this year.

Bohlander said the credit goes to the university’s productive faculty and its ability to involve students, both graduate and undergraduate, in hands-on learning.

“While the economic downturn has generally affected state and foundation support and federal support nationwide, federal dollars continued to increase into the university, which is a testament to the quality of proposals submitted by our faculty,” Farland said.

CSU competes with CU-Boulder for the highest number of dollars in research expenditure in Colorado. CU came in at $340 million in 2009, according to the institution’s research website. In 2009 CSU brought in $311.7 million.

“We go back and forth with Boulder. Colorado is really lucky to have two great research universities,” Bohlander said. “There are a lot of benefits the state economy gets. It brings a lot of jobs for the state and brings a tremendous amount of opportunity to faculty and students.”

Staff writer Kari Pills can be reached at news@collegian.com.