University Receives $134,500 Grant from Carver Trust

Aug 21, 2008 | University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

The University of Dubuque has been awarded $134,500 by the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust.  The grant will allow for the acquisition of an Anasazi 90MHz Eft FT-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) system and an associated dry air source.  

The acquisition of this equipment will allow the University's chemistry faculty to implement modern NMR instrumentation, theory, and practice into the curriculum.  Used to help determine the structure of a compound - how the elements of a compound are connected together- NMR instruments provide information (spectrum) that would be much more difficult to determine otherwise.  In addition to use in the classroom, the NMR will significantly enhance and expand student-faculty research opportunities, such as learning how phosphorus moves from the soil and water into living things, and back again.  The equipment will play an important role in the University's revised analytical chemistry, biochemistry, and instrumental analysis courses, which are part of the University's new chemistry minor program that began in the fall of 2007.  

Dr. Mark Sinton, professor of chemistry and project director for the NMR proposal stated, "We are grateful for the generosity of the Carver Trust that will allow us to incorporate this centrally important instrument into our chemistry program. This vital piece of equipment will provide our students and faculty many learning opportunities, both in curriculum and research development.  Becoming familiar with NMR instrumentation will give our students a very marketable skill as they move forward into the workplace."   

The Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust is the largest private philanthropic foundation in the state of Iowa with assets of more than $340 million and annual grant distributions of over $16 million.  It was created through the will of Roy J. Carver, a Muscatine industrialist and philanthropist, who died in 1981.  Since the beginning of the Trust's grant-making activities in 1987, more than $207 million has been distributed in the form of 1,700 individual grants. Biomedical and scientific research; primary, secondary and higher education; and other issues related to the needs of youth are the program areas of greatest interest to the Carver Charitable Trust.