15 



Mr. Brown. Your constituents elected you to do something about 

 that problem and I trust that you will do it. 



You will find a great deal of support for making sure that there 

 is an adequate allocation of research funds to the historically black 

 colleges and to other smaller institutions around the country in 

 order to develop research strength. I would argue against being too 

 dogmatic about this. There is always the possibility, if you allocate 

 strictly on the basis of the fact that the institution has been de- 

 prived of research funds that you won't get the most for your 

 money. But you can make the research grants in such a fashion 

 that it will develop the research strength of the institution and 

 make it a major contributor to the whole process. 



Mr. Bishop. I think the partnering and joint venturing with the 

 inclusion of some of the historically black colleges and universities 

 in joint ventures and joint projects with some of the larger univer- 

 sities would be a requirement that would perhaps help. 



Mr. Brown. I think that is an excellent idea. If you can find 

 some way to insert that into legislation authorizing the Depart- 

 ment or directing the Department to establish partnering relation- 

 ships between a major land-grant college and an historically black 

 college in the same region, it might be an advantage. 



We have such partnering relationships in some Departments. I 

 am more experienced with the Department of Energy, which has 

 made a point of seeking to develop relationships with the histori- 

 cally black colleges in order to develop a greater source of minority 

 engineers and scientists, for example. And those are good relation- 

 ships. 



Mr. Stenholm. Ms. Lambert, do you have a question? 



Ms. Lambert. Yes, Mr. Chairman. 



I would like to point out that we have worked some at the Uni- 

 versity of Arkansas, which is probably one of the medium-sized 

 land-grant colleges, in working with an historically black college, 

 UAPB, and using some of those together. The problem actually 

 stems from having less of those represented on the peer review sys- 

 tem. I think that is a key to point out and we would certainly like 

 to see some adversity there. 



Mr. Brown. Arkansas has always been a deprived State. [Laugh- 

 ter.] 



Mr. Stenholm. I suspect that may be changing now that Ms. 

 Lambert has joined this committee. [Laughter.] 



Thank you very much, Mr. Brown, for your testimony here today 

 and your work in this endeavor. We look forward to working side- 

 by-side with you and look forward to joining with you on the appro- 

 priate amendment to the appropriations bill when it gets to the 

 floor along this line. I happen to totally agree that some kind of 

 a review right now is very important and I believe that this idea 

 is shared throughout the community. Hopefully, we can find the 

 proper answer to that. 



Thank you for being here. 



I call our next witness. Dr. Bill Carlson, Deputy Administrator, 

 Cooperative State Research Service, USDA. 



Welcome, Dr. Carlson. 



