Support for what we do to advance Kentucky Campus Message
Campus Community,
As president of the University of Kentucky, I often get the opportunity to close on asks and gifts that have been more than 160 years in the making.
Over the last few months alone, UK has received a $50 million gift for pediatric care from the B. Thomas Golisano Foundation and $150 million to construct a fine arts district from the Bill Gatton Foundation. Those gifts are a testament to the work you do — and that so many before us have done — to help ensure a Kentucky that tomorrow is healthier, wealthier and wiser than it is today.
The same sense of mission and the building of relationships over many years also applies to the support we receive from policymakers at all levels of government.
In the last month alone, as the U.S. House and Senate finished the majority of their work around a federal budget, our research received more than $100 million in support for ground-breaking efforts in health, manufacturing, defense and agriculture, among others.
At the same time, there remains a clear bipartisan consensus for continued funding of basic science research — the lifeblood of what so many of us do at a research university like UK. In fact, the largest funder of health and science research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will receive an increase in funding with strong support on both sides of the aisle.
Our outstanding researchers and their teams are consistently being awarded competitive grants in areas that directly impact the health and economy of Kentucky, while continuing to support our national interests in being the country leading the world in these and other discoveries.
Notably, thanks to the decades of service and leadership by Senator Mitch McConnell, $65 million was targeted for the support of a second Healthy Kentucky Research Building.
More than $600 million in research awards have flowed through the Healthy Kentucky Research Building I since it opened in 2018 with the support ofstate policymakers. That work is focused on the health challenges confronting our state. The return of $600 million of research generated in the last seven years, is already twice the cost of the investment state lawmakers made years ago.
The building is full of researchers, scientists and support staff. But much remains to be done. Too many Kentuckians and communities suffer from chronic diseases and substance use disorders among other challenges.
The foundational support from Sen. McConnell and other members of our delegation will strengthen our case as we talk with policymakers in Frankfort and others about supporting a second Healthy Kentucky Research Building.
The importance of our federal delegation supporting the university comes at a critical time as our partners in Frankfort begin the process of negotiating and passing the most important policy document for the next two years — the state budget.
I had the honor of testifying in Frankfort last week on behalf of the UK Board of Trustees and each of you to share our story. Our General Assembly is pushing us harder than ever to justify each dollar we spend. Dollars are always limited in our Commonwealth, and the efforts to justify the return on their investment continue to grow.
As our new football coach said in his opening press conference, in a changing world the easiest way to fail is to stand still. Our board — recognizing this dynamic — continues to push us to do more and be more for Kentucky, and at the same time to become as efficient as possible.
Our discovery efforts in energy continue to garner strong backing among policymakers. While we continue to improve utilization technologies for traditional energy sources such as coal, we also are developing alternative uses that address national needs for critical materials.
Those efforts, led by our Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), will receive some $2 million with the support of Congressman Andy Barr focused on graphite manufacturing. Furthermore, Senator McConnell continues to provide strong support for CAER, who in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will leverage $20 million for the development ofhigh-value carbon products from coal including turning raw coal into finished high-performance fiber.
As further evidence of the time it takes to build support and make the case for investment, UK’s Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment will receive $10 million for a US Department of Agriculture Research Unit on our campus, joining a growing agricultural research cluster on our campus. This appropriation will enable us to move forward with construction of the unit, which received $65 million in 2020.
These are not standalone efforts. They don’t occur overnight. They are based on outstanding work, decades of relationship building among researchers and our teams across the university and raising awareness about what we do and how it impacts the lives of Kentuckians every day.
A few of us get the honor of closing on asks and agreements, which you and others over decades of work, make possible.
We exist to advance Kentucky. And these appropriations recognize the progress that together, in partnership with policymakers and communities, we can and must make.
Thank you for all you do to make such progress and investment possible.
Eli Capilouto
President