External funding for the College of Education has increased at a rate the college hasn’t seen in years, college officials said.

Jerry Thomas, interim dean of the college, said the funding increased at three times its normal rate in fiscal year 2004, making the college’s total for the year about $6.8 million.

In 2003, external funding was $5.4 million.

“Funding has gone up every year, but not by this amount,” he said. “The year before it increased by about 10 percent — and that’s the usual, 10 to 15. But this is the largest increase we’ve seen in a while.”

External funding comes from businesses and foundations for specific research and also from government agencies, Thomas said.

Thomas said the federal government contributed more than 70 percent — $4.9 million — of the 2004 funds. The largest contributors of this kind were the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation.

Award contracts usually span the course of two to three years, Thomas said, which means the funds will also be spread out over that period of time. The nearly $7 million in external funding for fiscal year 2004, however, includes only the portion of grants and contracts slated for use in that year, which was July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2004.

The amount of external funding coming to the college (and a new combined education/family and consumer sciences college) has potential to grow in the next few years, as well, Thomas said.

“Over the past five years or so, the college has increasingly hired faculty who are capable and interested in getting grants and contracts to support their work,” he said. “The thing that’s probably caused us to grow most is the department heads and faculty search committees that hired these bright young people who will do this research.”

Thomas said many interesting research projects are being done within each department of the college with this funding.

For example, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, is using external funding from the National Science Foundation to study how mathematics teachers in K-12 schools can effectively teach math to students.

Also, Panteleimon Ekkekakis, assistant professor of health and human performance, received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study the link between exercise and emotion. He uses ISU students in many of these experiments, Thomas said.

Thomas said the college’s Research Institute for Studies in Education has played a large role in bringing grants and contracts to the education college for this research, as well as doing some research itself.

Mack Shelley, professor of educational leadership and policy studies and head of the institute, said the Research Institute for Studies in Education brought in about $700,000 of the college’s external funding for fiscal year 2004. He said a portion of those funds will go to the institute’s joint research with Drake University on positive behavior supports for K-12 students.

“It’s about helping students understand what you should and shouldn’t do in school buildings,” he said. “What we’re doing is a large-scale statewide evaluation of the behavior programs, and how we measure their success is by a reduction in office referrals.”

Shelley said the institute gets the most visibility, however, from helping to bring in external grants and contracts to not just the education college, but every college at the university.

“We help all colleges at the university with grant proposals that have any kind of education link in their proposals. We’ll help them write proposals so they have the most chance of being accepted,” he said. “It’s a ‘rising tides float all boats’ kind of situation, you know — if you help other people out, it helps you, too.”