How much wood would a Nanook chuck if a Ted chucked him six million bucks?

That remains unclear with UAF officials just getting word about the $6.28 million to assess "new uses for wood" that Sen. Ted Stevens buried deep within the 3,320-page spending bill Congress passed before Thanksgiving. There's also almost $3.2 million granted to UAF to study berries. Not to mention $300,000 set aside to study the epidemiology of bird viruses.

"God, now that I'm looking at this, we got almost everything," said Martha Stewart, the university's federal relations director in Washington, D.C.

Although it could take university officials weeks if not months to figure out exactly how much federal pork they got, rough estimates place the total take at over $50 million for more than 60 university-related projects.

Chancellor Stephen Jones spent part of Thursday with his directors looking over the bill. "It looks like we were treated very well," he said beforehand, "and now we have an obligation to deliver."

Earlier this year, university departments drafted dream lists of proposed projects, then submitted them to campus chancellors and President Mark Hamilton for approval. At that point, Stewart and other university lobbyists went to work to pressure Alaska's congressional delegation for federal dollars.

Stevens, now in his final weeks as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, secured most of the earmarked funds. Only four projects did not receive any funds they requested, according to Stewart.

Although the university knows precisely how much money it requested overall, Stewart expects the amount to be lower. She hesitated to say exactly how much UA received in past years, but placed federal funding at about $50 to 90 million.

Although the bill provides funds for most of the university's efforts, in most cases it does not fund them at the level the university requested. For example, the statewide system requested $1.3 million to organize a 50th anniversary celebration of Alaska's statehood but received less than one-fifth of that, or $250,000. And while UA received $250,000 to continue digitizing its library archive material for Internet access, it had requested twice that amount.

Most of the earmarked funds will be used for research rather than for teaching. Research funding dominated the set-aside funds for the university. UA and the University of Massachusetts received $3 million for a joint project to study weather patterns. UAF will receive about $1.5 million to monitor volcanoes.

Stevens also secured about $2 million so that UAF researchers can spend time studying Russia's coast off a Russian ship as part of the Arctic Research Initiative. UA Statewide's Leadership Institute and Center for Civic Democracy will receive about $250,000, and programs to train Alaskan Natives for careers in psychology will gain another $500,000.

What of the wood, the berries and the avian viruses?

According to the university budget request, the wood utilization program plans to continue research on restructuring the state forest product industry by testing a wood-plastic composite material that might help strengthen the value of Alaska timber. The university actually received about $170,000 more than it originally sought for the work performed primarily at the Sitka campus extension.

The berry brigade will use $1.8 million in federal funds to study controlled environment conditions for growing berries and $1.4 million for researching and developing pharmaceutical products from Alaska berries and plants.

And the bird flu researchers will have about $300,000 to figure out whether Alaska's waterfowl can catch aviary flu from Chinese birds they come in contact with during their winter migrations.

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