User:Jhunt47/USU/Research

=Research and environmentalism= Utah State University is classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a research university with "high research activity." It received a record $187 million in research awards during the 2010 fiscal year, a 29 percent increase over the previous year. In addition to its faculty and graduate work, the university strongly emphasizes the importance of undergraduate research. USU's Undergraduate Research program recently celebrated its 35th anniversary, making it one of the oldest such organizations in the nation.

Along with the University of Utah, USU is an anchor in the Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) program, which is aimed at optimizing the university and region's most marketable strengths with the goal of bolstering Utah's high-tech economy. Nine USTAR teams currently perform research at Utah State.

Notable research centers based at USU include the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Energy Dynamics Laboratory, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Center for High Performance Computing, Utah Climate Center, Center for Advanced Nutrition, Center for the School of the Future, National Aquatic Monitoring Center, Intermountain Center for River Rehabilitation and Restoration, Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, and Utah Botanical Center, among others.

List of research and environmental impacts

 * Thanks to the Get Away Special (GAS) team sponsored by the Department of Physics, Utah State has placed more student experiments into space than any educational institution in the world.


 * In reaction to recent massive oil spills and the EPA's creation of the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure Plan (SPCC), USU has created its own SPCC with a detailed map of locations, oil types, quantities and containment specifications. The plan maps all possible outfalls from oil storage locations that may impact the waters of the United States.


 * On January 15, 2010, the university received ownership of the $30 million-plus Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter outside of Park City. The center consists of a 1200 acre land trust and a 10000 sqft, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to environmental education. The preserve protects critical wetland and foothill terrain in the heart of one of the state’s fastest-growing areas, and the EcoCenter, completed in 2009, is a multi-use facility with space for educational and community activities. The facility is LEED Platinum Certified, the highest standard for design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings.


 * Utah State University promotes the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Project (open and free university courses) and is developing an open content management system for OCW called eduCommons. This open source content management system is one of the important technology projects in the MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative. eduCommons aids in the creation of OCW sites and has already been adopted by several universities for this purpose.