UC Davis Research Funds:

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A Trickle-Down Bonus

By Michelle Margetts

Grants and research dollars continue pouring in to the University of California, Davis, a deluge that shows no sign of abating, good news for the school and a trickle-down bonus for local-area communities in jobs created and business vendors booked.     
     The university collected $421 million in research funding in 2003-2004, making it one of the leading research institutions in the nation – ahead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to the National Science Foundation – and it’s on target to hit $450 million this year.     
     The benefits of such largesse extend far beyond the UC Davis campus.  If UCD disappeared, 29,000 Sacramento Metro Market jobs would vaporize. You can’t drive around Sacramento’s Stockton Boulevard corridor, for example, without sighting new UCD Medical Center construction.     
     And that’s not to mention the explosion of new labs, parking structures, sports facilities and administrative offices on and near the campus. The cash flow into the local economy is beginning to be pretty obvious, even to a bunch of academics with their heads in the books.     
     Dean Nicole Biggart, who’s finishing her second year as head of the graduate school of management after a 23-year tenure as an economics professor at UCD, notes wryly that Davis is “a community of dweebs.  We love what we do, but we suffer from a disease of modesty.”

‘Reclusive’ Approach Changing
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