The University, along with Saint Louis University (SLU), University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and other local universities, is working to form the St. Louis Coalition for Latino Research. This coalition combines each school’s research and services to better enhance the overall research and provide increased services to the community.

Professor Luis Zayas, in Washington University’s George Warren Brown School of Social Work, is the director of the coalition. He started discussing it about a year ago with Joel Jennings, an assistant professor at SLU. Last semester, the coalition had its first meeting with more than 10 participants. Another meeting occurred this semester, and the membership has doubled.

A third meeting will likely occur later this year in which participants will actually share their research with one another to see how they should proceed.

The St. Louis Coalition for Latino Research combines members of many different disciplines, including anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, historians and biologists. According to Ana Baumann, a postdoctoral fellow in the Brown School and member of the coalition, this is a “win-win situation,” helping both their own research and the greater community.

Zayas discussed how the combination of research really would strengthen the different studies. He emphasized how a historian can help a sociologist by looking at similar infrastructure and its functions in historical cases.

Baumann further mentioned that this sort of study is exactly what the community has been asking for.

“We have organizations now, but we have pockets of people that are separate that are working with the community,” Baumann said. “The goal, then, is to get these people together. We don’t have only Washington University, SLU and UMSL, but also representatives from all three communities with us so we can hear from the community, what they need and what they want from us.”

Currently, Zayas, along with Jennings and other members, is assisting with La Casa de Salud. La Casa de Salud has reopened after La Clínica closed. La Clínica provided services to Latino immigrants, regardless of their legal status, but had to close due to a lack of funding.

The St. Louis Coalition for Latino Research is currently being hosted by Washington University’s Center for Latino Research and can be found through its Web site. The coalition is planning on expanding in the future and welcome any master’s, doctoral or postdoctoral students to join its forces.

“They are more than welcome to join us and help us develop grants and studies and workshops and strengthen the forces to help the Latino community,” Baumann said.

Baumann also emphasized how the coalition is only in its early stages and that there are future plans in the works. One such proposal is to develop workshops for the community that focus on parenting, mental health and Latino values.

Zayas is very pleased that Washington University is part of this coalition. While there are programs on Latin American languages and literatures and on Latin American studies in certain departments like anthropology, there really has not been a study on Latino population yet at Washington University, according to Zayas. He believes that Latin American Studies is a very important area that should be focused on, and that the University does not do nearly as much as it should to provide services to the Latino community in St. Louis.

Baumann believes that the reason that the University does not do as much as it should is a lack of available resources.

“The Latino community is increasing, and it’s increasing fast in St. Louis and in Missouri,” Baumann said. “We are very few…We are not enough to provide services for the community.”

This study coincides with an increase in the Latino population in St. Louis.

Estimates range from 58,000 people in the 2007 U.S. Census to 90,000 people in other counts that believe the census under-reports the Latino population.

The Pew Hispanic Center calculated that there were 170,000 Hispanics in Missouri in 2007. According to Zayas, the Latino population recently has been increasing in many places where it has not historically or traditionally been expected, in states like Missouri, Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia. In Missouri specifically, the economic status of Latinos is lower than that of non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks, based on a calculation of a lower median income.

KM is an antibiotic used to isolate bacteria and treat a variety of infections. It can also lead to severe hearing loss in both human and animals, however.

“Previous animal studies have shown that, when animals are given Kanamycin antibiotic and then exposed to noise, the animals will be more susceptible to noise,” said William Clark, professor of otolaryngology and director of the Program in Audiology and Communication Sciences, a division of the Central Insitute for the Deaf School at Washington University School of Medicine. “Therefore, we fully expected that the antibiotic would make young mice’s ears more susceptible to noise. Instead, we found that the drug completely protected the mouse from any hearing loss.”

The incident that gave rise to the study was a concern raised by an air nurse when she was supervising the transport of newborn babies from remote regions to St. Louis Children’s Hospital by helicopter. She was worried about the potential harm to infants’ hearing caused by exposure to loud noise from the helicopter. She expressed her concern to Clark, who approached the problem from a different perspective. Clark was concerned about the damaging effect of the antibiotic that was given to those premature babies to prevent against infections.

“From the laboratory we know that giving these drugs might in fact make the babies lose more hearing,” Clark said. “I thought maybe doctors should not give those infants the antibiotics because the risk of hearing loss outweighs the benefits of protecting against the infections.”

Due to the vulnerability of these babies, it was not possible to test on them directly. Clark and his colleagues turned to a laboratory study on young mice to see the effect of the drug-noise interaction.

“This particular kind of mouse has been used in lots of studies of effects of noise on hearing,” said Elizabeth Fernandez, a doctoral student in the Program in Audiology and Communication Sciences, who graduated last year from the School of Medicine. “It is a well-established model for human hearing.”

The results appeared to be the opposite of what was originally expected. Mice treated with low-dose KM prior to the exposure of noise were completely protected from sensory cell loss. Extended intervals between KM treatment and noise exposure also demonstrated that the protective effect of the drug-noise interaction could last for up to 48 hours.

“This is the first time that we see any protective effect has been demonstrated by a drug that causes hearing loss against noise that also produces damage to ears,” Clark said. “I thought that the doctor was making a mistake by giving [the] antibiotic to the babies being put on the helicopter. It turns out that it became exactly the right thing to do.”

Researchers have considered the possibility of KM as a method of preconditioning. Medical preconditioning refers to initiating a mildly injurious event in a way that serves to prevent against a later, more injurious event. In this case, low-does KM may have initially led to some minor sensory cell loss, thus providing subsequent protection against severe damages.

“The study has now been focused on identifying critical genes and pathways that this protective effect involves,” Fernandez said. “There could be a specific gene that protects the young mice from the damage. If we could discover the mechanisms that this protective effect uses, we might be able to create a medication that can either prevent the hearing loss or increase the resistance to hearing loss.”

The New Frontiers Program aims to select a medium-class spacecraft mission that will investigate the history of Earth’s formation or even the origin of life. Eight proposals from institutions around the nation were sent in response to the New Frontiers Program 2009 Announcement of Opportunity in July 2009.

“The mission MoonRise is about understanding the impact history of the solar system,” Jolliff said.

Jolliff and his team hope that lunar samples will give insight to the series of impact events that helped reshape the inner planets.

Scientists have theorized that after the planets formed through the accretion of impacting objects, the number of impacting objects eventually decreased. But a newer theory suggests that the accretion of impacting objects tailed off, only to increase again. Lunar samples from a previous Apollo mission age impact areas on the Moon from 3.8-3.9 billion years ago, providing support for the second theory.

“The moon rocks and even meteorites point to a tremendous event 4 billion years ago,” Jolliff said.

Investigating lunar samples from MoonRise may help determine if this event occurred, and, if so, what the characteristics and time interval of the event was. Furthermore, if these impacts to Earth occurred, they would have affected the beginning formation of life and the development of early continents.

MoonRise would send a lander to the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the oldest basin on the Moon, to collect approximately 2 pounds of samples. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology, a major partner of Jolliff and his team, would build the lander and design and implement the mission. Samples from the Moon would be further analyzed by the science team, which has collaborated and will continue to collaborate with scientists from institutions worldwide.

Jolliff wants Washington University students to become involved in this mission.

“We [Jolliff and his team] would like to have some really excellent student collaboration projects,” he said.

As a professor, Jolliff wants to have “maximum involvement from undergraduate and graduate students from Washington University.”

Freshman Katherine Shirley is already involved in data collection that would provide information essential in determining safe landing sites for the lander. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is imaging the Moon in detail, will create a large image mosaic of the basin.

“I’m happy to be involved in a really interesting field where lunar exploration could lead to further Martian exploration,” Shirley said.

Future projects also include exchanging students with partner institutions, such as the JPL.

“From my perspective, this is a great opportunity for Wash. U. to be [involved] in space exploration,” Jolliff said.

MoonRise would also engage the St. Louis community. According to Jolliff, the mission would include plans to immerse elementary through high school students in the fields of science and technology.

In addition to MoonRise, other proposals include an investigation, headed by Larry Esposito from the University of Colorado at Boulder, of the composition of Venus’ atmosphere and surface and a collection of meteorological data. The third selected proposal, headed by Michael Drake from the University of Arizona in Tucson, would send a spacecraft to collect samples from a primitive asteroid.

Finalists will be given approximately $3.3 million to complete a 12-month mission concept study. NASA will select the final project in 2011, and the mission will take place by Dec. 30, 2018.

National researchers in cell biology have identified proteins that turn normal skin cells into brown fat cells, which use energy to generate heat.

“Energy only gets burned when your heart beats or your muscles walk up a flight of stairs or when you breathe,” said Clay Semenkovich, chief of the division of endocrinology, metabolism and lipid research at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Brown fat cells do not store energy. They burn it without carrying out a function, such as beating the heart or walking, Semenkovich said.

Until recently, scientists believed that only animals and human babies had brown fat cells. But researchers discovered brown fat cells in adults when PET scans showed higher rates of glucose metabolism in patients who had been waiting in cold waiting rooms at their doctors’ offices.

Brown fat evolved to help people and animals in cold environments stay warm, Semenkovich said.

“People were freezing in the waiting rooms, and they were actually turning on brown fat,” he said.

The presence of brown fat cells in human adults carries implications for obesity research.

“People who are overweight have much less active brown fat,” Semenkovich said.

Researchers at Harvard engineered skin cells from mice and humans to become brown fat. This technology requires further research, though, before scientists can test it on humans.

“There’s always a disadvantage to tricking the body into doing things that it probably should not do,” Semenkovich said.

With brown fat, that disadvantage stems from the heat that the cells release. The excess heat could lead to dangerous and possibly deadly fevers in humans.

In the early 20th century, a chemist identified 2,4-dinitrophenol, a chemical that produced the same effects as brown fat cells.

“At one point somebody estimated that there were perhaps 500,000 people who had taken doses of this industrial chemical,” Semenkovich said. “It really did make them lose weight, but it also made them show up in emergency rooms with such dangerously high fevers that they died.”

Brown fat cell technology will require extensive research into controlling heat release.

“I want a therapy for people who are morbidly obese…but we’re going to have to be very careful about the way this is done or we’re going to cause a whole new set of problems,” Semenkovich said.

Weight loss research has implications for nutrition as well. Connie Diekman, director of University nutrition and former president of the American Dietetic Association, sees students on campus attempting to lose weight by changing their food intake and exercising.

“What many students get caught up in, though, is it doesn’t happen as quickly as they want, so they wonder about the fast loss, whether it’s the pills, whether it’s the diet, whatever it might be,” Diekman said.

Diekman said that while obesity research is essential to provide an understanding of metabolism, the public should approach weight loss techniques cautiously.

“You want to follow guidelines that are based upon what we know,” Diekman said. “Don’t change every time a new research study comes out.”

Currently, the scientific evidence shows that food changes are the proven method of losing weight.

“Physical activity alone will not do it,” Diekman said.

Diekman works with chefs on campus to create healthy food options for students. She also works to educate the University community on healthy food choices by writing informational brochures placed on the tables at dining locations such as Wohl Dining.

Sophomore Stephanie Trimboli finds that eating healthily on campus is “easy if you want to,” but she does not see much evidence of the administration’s attempts to educate students on healthful eating choices.

Despite nutritional guidelines, the implications of new weight loss research remain appealing to the public.

“It’s so seductive to people to be able to take something that will solve their problems without having to exercise [or eat less] that someone will always wind up doing it,” Semenkovich said.

This year’s fall Undergraduate Research Symposium saw a record number of participants and, according to the program coordinator, an unusually diverse variety of topics. It packed student research, internships, art and even a lunchtime dance performance together in one forum for peers, teachers and parents to experience.

Just one week later, it was followed by another research symposium equally diverse in another way. University students presented their work side by side with students from 12 other Midwestern colleges in a weekend-long symposium hosted by the Midstates Science and Math Consortium.

According to Kristin Sobotka, special programs coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Research, which hosted the event, there was a record number of around 250 undergraduate posters, 10 high school students with posters, and 10 undergraduate talks. More presenters meant higher traffic.

“The word’s just kind of out. People know what it’s all about,” she said.

Fall symposia tend to see a higher density of biomedical research conducted by students over the summer and funded by Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURFs). In the spring, psychology and political science majors and other students typically present their honors thesis work. But Sobotka said this year was unusual.

“This fall we definitely had a larger number of non-life-sciences presentations, just because I think again the awareness level is rising among everybody,” Sobotka said. “More students who are doing a variety of different things know about it and just say on their own, ‘Hey, can I present at the symposium?’”

This year also saw the inception of a partnership between the art school and the Office of Undergraduate Research. Art students set up tables outside the building, where they sold prints of the Central West End, clay sculptures, and more.

“We helped support it and helped make it happen, but it was really the students in the art school that came up with the idea, and basically it was their show,” Sobotka said. “They came to us to ask if we could help them, and we did…We just want to keep that partnership and keep that happening each year.”

Saad Hasan, a senior, presented his thesis research at the undergraduate research symposium.

Hasan studies fish that create weak electric fields to sense their surroundings and communicate with one another, much in the same way that bats use echolocation. He made inferences about the evolutionary history of these fishes’ electric communication by comparing the volume of key brain structures across several species.

“The pretty big finding is that there are two subfamilies of the mormyrid family [of weakly electric fish], and there’s a dramatic difference in the size of what’s called the EL…between the two families,” he said. So the subfamilies show “a subspecialization of interpretive function” in the way they communicate.

Hasan said he received a “decent amount” of traffic, including professors and parents, and appreciated the way posters of different topics were all mixed in together.

“It was also interesting the way it was done, because you’re more likely to look at the [poster] right next to you, [which] could be anything,” Hasan said.

The weekend after the symposium, several Washington University students presented their work at a three-day conference in the Central West End hosted by the Midstates Math and Science Consortium, a collaboration between 13 Midwestern schools. Washington University and the University of Chicago take turns hosting an undergraduate biology and psychology conference, as well as a physics and chemistry conference each year.

About 90 students were in attendance, including five from Washington University, as well as faculty representatives from all 13 schools. The students attended poster sessions, plenary lectures, a panel on graduate school admissions, and social events in the evenings, including hands-on group neuroscience demos and a trip to the City Museum.

Senior Alejandro Akrouh gave a poster presentation about his research on a mutation that causes neonatal diabetes. He studied a mutation that was found in an infant patient that turned out to be a problem with ATP-dependent potassium—or KATP—channels. These channels regulate ion balances in the cell membranes of pancreas cells that are responsible for secreting insulin when blood sugar is too high.

“We found that the loss of function is due to inactivation of the KATP channel,” he said.

His work, which he pursued full-time during a year and a half off from classes, has led to two publications, two more that will appear in the next month, and a fifth currently in progress. But he said that since he has been very focused on his project, the most helpful part of the symposium was seeing a wide variety of research.

“Oftentimes, when you’re very focused on a project you can lose sight of what your academic peers are doing.”

This blitz of student presentations seems to have saturated students’ needs, and some opted to skip out on the consortium. While the Undergraduate Research Symposium attendance did not seem to be affected, some attendees said Washington University was under-represented at the Midstates Consortium conference.

“We could always do better with Wash. U. turnout,” said Erik Herzog, professor of biology and the Washington University representative to the consortium.

“The students that I’ve asked have generally said they’ve had enough opportunities to present. So it’s less about the location and more about that they have other things they need to do,” he said.

Science researchers at the University say they are enjoying a spike in federal funding, thanks in large part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. So far, the University has received around $80 million in stimulus-related research funding, most of it for science. The money comes as a result of some 200 grants the University has received in the last year, culled from more than 900 grants for which University researchers applied.

Federal research dollars have mostly funded projects at the medical school. In June, for example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) extended a five-year, $37 million grant to medical researchers studying biodefense and emerging infectious diseases in the Midwest. The NIH also gave the medical school $19 million to study microbes in the human body and the role they play in health and disease.

George Weinstock, professor of genetics at the medical school, is heading the medical school’s microbe study. Weinstock is also directing a $2 million stimulus-funded study on a bacterial infection called MRSA.

“We are doing very well and are in an expansion mode as we received funding for about 10 projects last year,” Weinstock said. “We’re going a little nuts keeping up with all the work, but it’s a heady feeling to have the opportunity to do so much cool science and contribute to the biomedical realm.”

Weinstock said science research is only just getting a jump-start in funding now that President Bush has left office.

“The Bush administration did a tremendous amount of damage to funding for scientific research,” Weinstock said. “Prior to the administration, there had been a lot more funding for the NIH. We’ll just have to see in the new administration whether they’re going to be able to get the momentum back in the scientific research.”

He said stimulus funding has proven helpful to scientific research, but it does not guarantee strong science research funding from Obama in the future.

“We’re still navigating choppy waters, and time will tell how it all comes out,” Weinstock said.

$20 million biology grant is largest ever to Danforth Campus

Not all of the University’s federal research funding has gone to the medical school. Last spring, the University received its largest-ever award to the Danforth Campus, a $20 million grant to study light energy. The award was not a part of the government’s stimulus funding but came through the Department of Energy.

The $20 million is going toward the establishment of a Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) on campus, in which scientists will study the harnessing of energy from light. Robert Blankenship, a professor in the biology and chemistry departments, is heading the project. He said the study will focus on identifying the principles that govern natural photosynthetic antenna systems, such as the ones bacteria use to create energy, as a basis for designing solar-powered energy systems.

“We start with the purely natural antennas, that we’ve found in organisms. Then we go to the bio-hybrids, half natural, half synthetic. Then finally, we move on to the purely synthetic systems, things you might design for an artificial complex,” Blankenship said. “But they’re all designed to address the same issue of light collection.”

Blankenship said he learned that the project had received funding when President Obama announced the grant at the National Academy of Sciences last April.

“It was sort of like, your life has just changed,” Blankenship said of hearing that his project had just been given $20 million.

He said research projects like his are getting funded in higher numbers with money from the stimulus. But he reiterated Weinstock’s message that this does not mean science research has a stable future.

“Science has struggled for years to keep the enterprise going, so I think the Recovery Act funding was welcome in that sense,” Blankenship said. “The thing is the Recovery Act money is kind of a one-time shot.”

Kuklo was under federal investigation after members of the U.S. Army accused him of fabricating data for a bone-growth drug study, which he performed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Now, a University committee says the claim that Kuklo made up data cannot be supported, though this does not mean he has been found innocent.

“This is akin to a finding of insufficient evidence, and should not be characterized as a complete exoneration,” the University said in a statement released Thursday.

The University committee found that Kuklo violated school research integrity policies and guidelines for human subject research in other ways.

History: Kuklo, Infuse and the University’s investigation

The committee’s findings come after seven months of investigation into Kuklo’s case.

Last spring, The New York Times printed allegations from several U.S. Army officials who claimed that Kuklo altered research data on Infuse, a bone-growth hormone used to treat wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.

The Army members alleged that Kuklo had inflated the number of soldiers with leg injuries who were able to be treated effectively with Infuse. Kuklo was also accused of forging the signatures of four Army doctors when submitting the results of his study for publication.

Controversy heightened around the case when it was revealed that Kuklo had been paid $800,000 by Medtronic, the company that makes Infuse. The University said later that Kuklo had not disclosed to the school his financial ties to Medtronic.

After the allegations surfaced, Kuklo took leave from the University in May. An article on his study was retracted from the medical journal that printed it. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, began a federal inquiry into Kuklo’s case. Kuklo later resigned from the University.

A University committee was then formed to investigate the allegations brought against Kuklo.

The committee’s findings

Although the University’s full findings have not been made public, The New York Times reported Friday that the committee found it possible that Kuklo had not misrepresented the number of leg injuries that had been successfully treated with Infuse.

The committee based this conclusion on the assumption that Kuklo could have defined the leg injuries he studied more broadly than other Army officials would have. The committee also suggested that some of the questionable data tied to Kuklo could have resulted from problems with recordkeeping at Walter Reed.

But the committee found no justification for Kuklo’s forging four doctors’ signatures. The New York Times reported that Kuklo asserted he had only included the doctors’ names as a courtesy, but the committee determined that his forgeries suggested an “intentional deception.”

The University stated that it is not reconsidering Kuklo’s resignation in light of the committee’s findings.

University sharpens focus on research integrity

News of Kuklo’s clearing came at the end of the University’s inaugural Academic Integrity Week.

The week’s events, which culminated this weekend with the Center for Academic Integrity International Conference on campus, included several panel discussions and speakers on research integrity.

Last Monday, for example, student group Controversy N’ Coffee hosted a forum on cheating called, “Could my Wash. U. Degree Lose its Credibility?”

Tuesday saw a panel discussion on intellectual property law, and another panel was held Wednesday on integrity in job and graduate school applications.

On Thursday, David Callahan, public-policy activist and author of “The Cheating Culture” and “The Moral Center,” delivered an Assembly Series lecture titled, “Creating a Culture of Integrity.”

Kuklo, associate professor of orthopedic surgery, submitted a letter of resignation on July 30, effective Sept. 30, according a statement issued by the University.

“Dr. Kuklo has agreed to voluntarily resign from the University, effective September 30, 2009,” the statement said. “Dr. Kuklo will have no clinical, research, or educational duties for the University between now and that date.”

Kuklo has been the subject of several federal inquiries over a study he allegedly falsified while he worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He performed the study, which was about the benefits of a bone growth drug, before coming to the University.

Medical school spokesman Don Clayton declined to comment further because school officials are conducting an investigation.

Read Student Life for more details on this story.

The state of the economy has had a profound impact on the job market. According to the Bureau of Labor, the national unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in December, with employers shedding more than half a million jobs.

Students recognize that the tighter economy may mean a tougher job search.

“I’m kind of looking at a list of things—jobs, grad school, whatever opportunities might come up,” senior Gregory Auclair, an English and international and area studies major, said. “I think the opportunities are out there—you have to find them.”

“There are always places for really talented people,” Chancellor Mark Wrighton said.

Institutions of higher education worldwide are feeling the effects of the crisis on their endowments. The University’s endowment dropped sharply in the 2008 fiscal year, falling about 25 percent from its all-time high of $5.66 billion to $4.22 billion, as of Dec. 3.

The administration is now cutting back on hiring, but will still add some new staff.

“Even though we are not constrained we will be careful. We do not have a hiring freeze and we will be adding faculty,” Wrighton said. “We are recruiting right now. We will be doing this selectively.”

Staff consolidation is taking place. According to Wrighton, the University will not lay off professors.

The funding used to employ researchers on campus is variable. If the University does not receive sufficient funding, in the form of grants, the school will not be able to keep as many research scientists on staff.

Despite the volatile state of the economy, University research funding remains strong.

“We’re a very strong research institution,” Wrighton said.

According to Wrighton, the University has recently received a number of research grants.

The University received a grant of $12 million in order to forward research into clean coal technology. The Danforth Foundation also made a contribution of $10 million to the endowment for medical research.

Wrighton expects that the federal government, with the incoming Barack Obama administration, will play a role in expanding research opportunities at the University.

“The federal government, particularly the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is our largest single sponsor,” Wrighton said. “President-elect Obama in his campaign said he would favor doubling the NIH budget over 10 years.”

But many are concerned about how the current economy affects the University’s ability to extend financial aid to current and future students.

“Considering I plan to go to graduate school, I would prefer if at all possible to not have too much outstanding debt from my undergraduate education,” freshman Jacob Witt said. “In this economy, I have no idea if any funds will be available to help me with this concern.”

In reaction to the economic turmoil, the University anticipates increasing financial aid.

“We are in a position to be more responsible year after year,” Wrighton said. “We hope we can expand the investment. We’re going to strive to have an increase in financial aid that is greater than the increase in tuition.”

Director of Student Financial Services Bill Witbrodt wrote in an e-mail to Student Life that the University will work to ensure that all currently enrolled students will be able to graduate despite any unexpected financial troubles they may encounter.

“I can confirm that Washington University will not let finances stand in the way of enrolled students’ ability to complete their programs and graduate on time,” Witbrodt wrote. “This has always been the position of the University. It’s part of our department’s mission statement.”

So far, Witbrodt said that the University has not seen a measurable increase in financial aid requests but that if they do, the University plans “on being as responsive as it has in the past.”

Despite the financial fallout, Wrighton is confident that the University will persevere.

“Our business is very strong,” Wrighton said. “We’re doing very well.”

According to Susan Lindsey, executive director of the sanctuary, while the center has acquired land around the La Barque stream in Jefferson County, Ark. that will be more suitable for the wolves, it still lacks the necessary funding to complete the move.

The center, an internationally-renowned facility for breeding endangered wolves and foxes, is a private, non-profit conservation organization that has been leasing land since 1971 at the Tyson Research Center—a 2,000-acre field station located 20 miles from the Danforth Campus that is used for environmental research and education.

“The primary function of the Wild Canid Center is to take small populations and rear them to populations of at least 100, so reintroduction [into the wild] can begin,” Lindsey said.

The center’s lease at Tyson has expired, and Tyson has created a long-term plan that involves the construction of two new buildings for a program in biological sustainability on the land currently occupied by the center.

“The building we are working toward now will be for high school kids getting involved in environmental research and sustainability,” John Chase, director of the Tyson Research Center, said. “The long-term vision is to develop an internationally-recognized program in environmental research and sustainability. We will be developing a number of large-scale research programs in these areas and taking St. Louis [outreach] initiatives.”

But Henry Webber, executive vice chancellor for administration, stressed that the University is trying to help the center, not hurt it.

“We’re all working together for a common goal, relocating them to a location that will be better for them and [will] allow the program in biological sustainability to flourish,” he said.

According to Lindsey, they expect to raise enough money for zoning and construction from donors, as well as from sale of some of their newly bought Ozark acres to the federal government for a state park.

One species they house is the maned wolf; these wolves are actually owned by Brazil, which asked the center to carry out a breeding program for them.

Another species is the Mexican gray wolf, which was near extinction when the center received five individuals in the late 1970s. Now, there are about 200 in captivity and 100 in the wild.

“There would be no Mexican gray wolf if it weren’t for the Wild Canid Center,” Lindsey said.