BALTIMORE, Md. — Five million dollars may not seem like much when it comes to our nation’s defense budget, but devoting that much for research at Morgan State University could be priceless.
“We deserve just as much access to resources as other institutions,” said Tamera Trimuel, president of the sophomore class.
With that in mind, the Maryland congressional delegation lobbied successfully for legislation requiring the Department of Defense to provide more federal grants to historically black colleges and universities.
“We know that we have others around the world who are at the cutting edge of technology and research,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, “and in order to make sure we keep our competitive edge and we continue to lead, we need to make sure that we apply all of our brain power.”
Right now, 10 HBCUs across the country are graded as high level research institutions or R2s, but top level R1s like Stanford and MIT, or Johns Hopkins, College Park and UMBC for that matter, draw the bulk of the defense grants.
The new funding commitment could help others reach that level.
“Our annual impact in the State of Maryland is over $1.1 billion at the R2 level,” said Morgan State University President Dr. David Wilson, “We certainly anticipate as we move to the next level, R1, that economic impact could be doubled or tripled.”
We’re told that the more federal grants that Morgan State can attract, the more state-of-the-art laboratories, instrumentation and opportunities for its students it can provide.
Opportunities that have thus far eluded them at the highest level.
“Now that historically black colleges are becoming more popular and people are seeing the benefits of them, especially Black students, there is no ceiling anymore,” said Trimuel, “We’re breaking through it.”
