State likely to fund lab facility

ANNAPOLIS – University officials are confident they can secure state funding to begin building a new physical sciences complex, which they hope can begin to chip away at a significant lack of laboratory and research space on the campus.

The $41.1 million physical sciences complex will provide 82,000 square feet of research space, but University System of Maryland Chancellor Brit Kirwan and university President Dan Mote said the General Assembly's continuing focus on building classrooms instead of research labs is hampering state universities' ability to bring in much-needed grant money.

Up to half of each research grant can help fill a university's general budget and fill a consistent shortfall in funding from the state. And a reputation for reaping lucrative grants can also help a university's prestige and attract graduate students and top-notch faculty.

"The research space deficit — it's such an important issue," Kirwan told legislators. "Not addressing this problem has very unfortunate side effects for our state."

He said previously approved lab space projects have been a "drop in the bucket" compared to the 1.6 million square-foot shortfall the system faces.

Administrators are nearly certain they'll get the money for the complex when the General Assembly votes on the capital budget sometime between now and the end of the legislative session in early April.

"I'm not even entertaining the idea that it's not going to be approved," Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie said.

The outlook for other university projects in the capital budget is less bright. While the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee's subcommittee on the capital budget also looked favorably on funding for a new Maryland Fire and Rescue Training Center in Harford County, money to renovate the Chemistry Building and to create a library storage facility was put off, and a project to restore the campus creek was also killed. No funding was allocated for the university's massive repair backlog, which state policy analysts now estimate to be about $500 million. The capital budget is used to pay for one-time costs state agencies face, usually construction, in contrast to the operating budget, which funds day-to-day workings.

The physical sciences complex, set to be built on the east side of the Computer and Space Sciences Building, would house the physics and astronomy departments and the Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology, according to Mote's written testimony. Those departments occupy dilapidated buildings built in the 1950s and '60s.

"These programs have been operating in substandard and inadequate space for many years," his testimony reads. "Wiring in the Toll Physics Building crumbles in the hands of maintenance staff replacing light fixtures, circuits are overloaded, and piping frequently fails resulting in flooding. The Physics Department lost a member of the National Academy of Sciences to another university, in part, because of the inability of the infrastructure in the Toll Physics Building to support his research. In October 2002, an electrical panel in the Toll Physics Building exploded and an electrical maintenance employee tragically died."

The physical sciences complex got a boost earlier this year when the federal government announced the university would receive $10.3 million for a quantum physics lab that will be part of the building. The complex has been in the works for two years. Mote gushed in describing the project to the committee, calling it "a very exciting project for us" and "a great step forward."

"Once we get these labs, research is just going to boom," he said.

cwells@umdbk.com