Based on Timothy McLaughlin's letter to the editor on Tuesday, I thought perhaps Penn State's cocoa program had earned a Golden Fleece Award, but alas, I believe it undeserved.

Former Senator William Proxmire, D-Wisc., initiated the Golden Fleece Awards in 1975 to recognize "wasteful, ridiculous or ironic use of the taxpayers' money." It was often bestowed upon dubious research such as a project funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to find out if drunken fish are more aggressive than sober fish.

Mr. McLaughlin's suggestion to "leave researching a better cocoa bean to Nestle and stop gouging the student checkbook," naively presumes that Penn State has one finite pot of money that it can elect to spend on either research or teaching (among other things). However, cocoa research is funded through an endowment established by the American Cocoa Research Institute and, therefore indirectly by Nestle and other chocolate manufacturers, specifically for that purpose. Penn State's cocoa program supports a $16 billion industry that employs about 72,000 people, of which about 15,000 are taxpayers in Pennsylvania. Numerous undergraduates have gained valuable experience through the cocoa program. For example, several traveled to Trinidad to build greenhouses for cocoa farmers.

A land-grant institution such as Penn State has several missions among which are the discovery of new knowledge and the diffusion of existing knowledge. Sometimes these roles are in conflict, but more often than not they are complementary.