UH UARC

From dKosopedia

University Affiliated Research Center (UARC): "UARCs are not-for-profit, private sector organizations affiliated with, or part of, universities or colleges that maintain essential research, development and engineering capabilities needed by sponsoring DoD components. The UARCs are a recent DoD designation of university affiliated laboratories doing over $2 million of core work annually for DoD using management guidelines tailored to their unique structure. They too maintain long-term strategic relationships with sponsoring DoD components in specific core areas and operate in the public interest, free from real or perceived conflicts of interest."...UARCs are financed through long-term, non-competitive contracts awarded by sponsoring DoD components for specified core work." (A-19, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) and University Affiliatate Research Centers (UARC), Independent Advisory Task Force, January 1997)

The four designated UARCs are:

the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University
the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) at the Pennsylvania State University
the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington
the Applied Research Laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin

All four laboratories have been conducting research and development for the United States Navy for the last sixty years. In the 1990s, the Navy committed a relationship to the four university laboratories by designating them as University Affiliated Research Centers.

In July of 2004, the Navy proposed the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa as the fifth UARC. In response, the students of U.H. and the community protested with a 7-day sit in at the campus administration building that ended on May 5, 2005. [1]

The UH Board of Regents gave preliminary approval to the center in November 2004. University administrators have said it would bring an estimated $50 million in Department of Defense research contracts to the university over five years.

Opponents of the UARC say it would go against the ethics and spirit of a public university by encouraging military research, some of which could be related to weapon development.

UH UARC Background Documents [2]:

Awards from DOD-Dept of Defense at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, From 7/1/2004 to 4/13/2005 (PDF)
Navy Recommendation for Establishing a University Affiliated Research Center at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (PDF)
Applied Research Laboratory Technical Proposal, Submitted February 4, 2005 (PDF)

UARC Contract and Business/Management Plan