Hood to receive $1 million from federal omnibus bill

Jan. 7—Hood College will receive $1 million from Congress to fund its new Data Driven Frederick Center and its Biomedical Research and Training Center.

Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, secured the funding via the omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2023, which passed last month, the college wrote in a press release Friday.

Members of Congress can present projects in their state or district for the Appropriations Committee to consider for inclusion in the bill.

The Data Driven Frederick project will be an analytics center to "collect, aggregate and make available vital data and regional indicators" about Frederick County, the college's press release said.

The program will be housed at the George B. Delaplaine Jr. School of Business. It will allow students and faculty to conduct research with community organizations and give businesses, nonprofits and citizens access to a wide array of datasets.

David Gurzick, an associate professor of management science at Hood and chair of the Delaplaine School, told the News-Post last year that examples of the type of data to be aggregated were the number of building permits issued by the county each month or demographic information that a nonprofit collects about its clients.

Meanwhile, the Biomedical Research and Training Center, housed within the Hodson Science and Technology Center, will feature state-of-the-art labs. It will allow the college to offer STEM training opportunities for Hood students, as well as students from other regional colleges and employees of local companies, the release said.

The facility will be built as part of a 32,000-square-foot addition to the current Hodson Center.

Hood President Andrea Chapdelaine thanked Cardin and Van Hollen in the release.

"Building on Hood's historic and growing academic strengths in these areas, the new facilities will enable our students and faculty to help address both local and global challenges in partnership with Frederick biomedical research and manufacturing industries, government, businesses and nonprofits," she said.

In a statement, Cardin said the projects would "bolster Hood College's ability to serve two identified needs for the Frederick community in supporting nonprofit organizations and the biomedical workforce."

Van Hollen wrote that the federal funding was an important investment in local STEM education.

"With these funds, Hood College will help unlock more opportunity for students in our state," Van Hollen's statement said.

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