University of Utah only state school to report foreign donations

SALT LAKE CITY — A state lawmaker's quest to uncover foreign donations to Utah schools netted limited results in its first year.

The University of Utah was the only state school to report any gifts of at least $50,000 in the 2010 fiscal year as required by a bill pushed earlier this year by Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman. The U. disclosed 17 contributions from nine organizations and one individual for a total of $1,839,922.

The money was used to fund research benefiting the oil industry, to support international internships for political science students and to bring a major construction project close to the starting line.

During debate on his bill, Wimmer raised the specter of overseas entities influencing the curriculum at state schools with their financial clout. He pointed to other states where Saudis and others had donated heavily.

But after reviewing the list compiled this month, Wimmer said he was surprised by the small number of donations and that none of them concerned him.

"I think the bill did exactly what I hoped it would do," he said. "It brought transparency to who is donating to our universities." Although Wimmer originally proposed tracking every foreign gift given for a specific purpose, he now says he has no plans to revisit the issue.

More than half the total came from a single donation by Firelight Investments ULC, a Calgary-based company tied to Pierre Lassonde, a noted Canadian gold investor. The $1 million sum went, appropriately, to the U.'s Pierre Lassonde Entrepreneur Center, a selective program he established in 2006 with a $13.25 million gift to teach business students how to commercialize research coming out of university labs. He also gave $136,439 last year to the center's New Venture Development Fund.

Another major recipient was the Consortium for Electromagnetic Modeling and Inversion, led by geophysics professor Michael Zhdanov. It received gifts totaling $253,938 from oil companies in China, Brazil, Norway and France. Zhdanov studies how to find petroleum underground by using electrical currents to produce a subterranean image similar to a CT scan.

The U.'s College of Mines and Earth Sciences also got $119,565 from China's Yunnan Metallurgical Group to study ultrahard materials, used in tools and ammunition, in the lab of powder metallurgy professor Zak Fang. The college's dean, Frank Brown, said industrial research programs at the U. have "very strong connections with China" going back decades.