University of Montana Scores Record Year for Research Funding

The University of Montana is starting off the school year by breaking some records in the area of research funding.

"We set a record this year in a couple of the research categories," said UM Graduate School Dean Scott Whittenberg. "We received 87 million dollars worth of dollars that people on the outside wanted to spend on our research, and we also set a record by spending 78 million dollars from last years research awards on new research that we're doing this year."

According to Whittenberg, the big secret to the jump in funding has been an active research faculty.

"We added quite a few new, young active researchers last year," Whittenberg said."We received  three NSF career awards, which are given to young faculty members showing exceptional promise. A big part of it is just the quality of the faculty here doing research. We put a bit more money into some of the resources that we provide to them, in terms of fixing up the space, equipment, start up costs and so on."

The jump in research funding at the University of Montana is big. Whittenberg says it's about 40 percent higher than what UM collected just two years ago.