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By Sherry F. Pruitt

JONESBORO -- The Arkansas Biosciences Institute on the ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY campus was dedicated in 2005, and ASU System President Dr. Les Wyatt said he has been pleased with what goes on inside the facility.

"I've really been pleased to see what [executive director] Dr. Carole Cramer and her associates on the research faculty -- what students, researchers and post-doctoral students -- have been able to do with that facility," Wyatt said during a recent interview.

Wyatt praised the activities taking place at the ABI facility, including new advanced studies. Achievements related to those studies are being recognized by colleagues and participants within the ABI consortium, including the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Medical Sciences, Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock and the Division of Agriculture at the University of Arkansas.

"Our researchers go down to present papers that they generated in our ABI facility here in Jonesboro to other colleagues who are participants in the other ABI initiatives. So that means that Carole Cramer or her associates would put her research projects upon a wall with everybody else's," he explained. "It has literally happened that the meetings have been stopped to recognize the research that is being done at Arkansas State."

Meetings were not stopped by ASU officials, but by other research participants, who said, "'We need to stop and take note of what is happening in the laboratories of Arkansas State,'" Wyatt said. "This is significant research. I've really been proud of our people. ... So in a very short period of time, we have stepped up on a higher plateau with this involvement, and we've been recognized for it."

Making changes

In many ways the ABI facility and its programs have changed ASU, and it will be significant in making the university one which is competitive in the 21st century, the president said.

"ABI is both a vehicle for those changes and is a unifying element for those changes, and it is a unifying element for those different pieces," Wyatt noted. "ABI touches almost every component of the university in some way, or the different areas of the university have a relatedness to what happens in ABI in some remarkable ways."

Almost every discipline on campus can relate to ABI in some way through collaboration or support, and it is more than simply a science facility.

"It is a social facility, a community facility and an agricultural facility," he pointed out. "It deals with businesses that can be created out of those laboratories. It really cuts a swath across a lot of different areas of interest within the university."

He noted that it has been meant for the ideas developed within the complex to be shared across the campus, with lots of people involved in collaborations.

"The vision for the ABI has been realized, but what is still being developed is the vision for what happens within it because of it," Wyatt explained. "That will engage people in the next generation of the university and probably for the next half-century as to see what may be made of that remarkable facility."

Wyatt credited Gov. Mike Beebe, who played a significant role in the ideas for ABI.

"Recalling how that ABI building came into focus, we are and always will be indebted to that concept for the tobacco settlement distribution. It was then-Sen. Mike Beebe, who came up with these ideas [and] challenged us to develop a vision, which he is now able to see implemented in his role as governor of the State of Arkansas."

Wyatt praised Beebe's vision for the facility, as well as the governor's leadership abilities.

"The fingerprints of a very capable leader, who not only had this vision for our opportunity, but now will have the opportunity to implement it through his legislation and the leadership of the state is really a nice bookend to that process," the ASU president stated. "I am grateful that our legislative delegation here in Northeast Arkansas has also embraced ABI and given particular attention to how their interests might be met by that facility."

sherry@jonesborosun.com