Planning for the Research Mission of Public Universities in the Twenty-first Century
no. 101 - June 1997

The State of Research Endeavors: View from the Administrative Level

Sally Frost-Mason
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Kansas

The investment that administrators, in particular deans, make is primarily in people. The most important resource we have is not our budget or any other money that happens to be available to us, it is the people that we work with who are actively engaged in teaching and research.

As deans, it is important to understand that our truly significant role in administration is one of facilitator. For example, we facilitate the hiring and mentoring of faculty, the recruitment of students, both graduate and undergraduate, and the acquisition of resources to sustain the academic enterprise. The topic we focused on at the Merrill conference dealt exclusively with the research enterprise, although it was argued effectively that to separate research and teaching at a research university is not an easy or desired objective. Consequently, my comments focus on research, but with the caveat that research and teaching are interwoven throughout the fabric of the entire academic enterprise.

Facilitation of the research enterprise is expensive, both in terms of time and resources. Salaries for new faculty in the humanities begin in the mid-$30,000 range but can extend well into the $40,000 range; in the natural and social sciences starting salaries begin at about $40,000 and can range up to or exceed $50,000, all depending on the level of experience and discipline of the individual. Some disciplines, such as economics, can command starting salaries that exceed $50,000. The costs to initiate the research efforts of young faculty can also reach staggering proportions. Startup packages for new faculty in the sciences can range from $50,000 to $500,000; social scientists are commanding increasingly larger startup costs which may approach $50,000 or more in certain disciplines; even a person new to the humanities faculty comes to us not without significant cost in terms of computing capabilities and library resources. The pressure on deans and academic units to raise and allocate dollars for the recruitment of new faculty is enormous. The costs will continue to escalate along with the dangers that young faculty will fail to meet today's standards for promotion and tenure at research universities. Can a Chemistry Department with a $300,000+ investment afford to have a young physical chemist fail to be promoted, for example? And how does the dean respond to the request to hire yet another physical chemist with a similar startup investment when the return on the failed hire, in terms of research productivity, was minimal? These are dilemmas commonly faced by administrators today.

Consider next the needs of the faculty once they have joined a research university. In addition to startup costs, which typically include renovation of laboratory space and acquisition of equipment and supplies, there is great pressure to hire/find personnel who can assist in the research enterprise. This is especially critical in the sciences, where multiple "hands" are necessary to conduct complex arrays of experiments and operate sophisticated equipment. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, technicians, and even undergraduates have been the standard resources that scientists have relied on in the past, but while undergraduate interest in the sciences continues to increase, the opportunities for graduate and post-graduate students are flagging. Many graduate programs are down-sizing--some by necessity and others by design--as the quality of programs is being assessed in conjunction with the apparent "glut" in the academic job market. Fewer graduate students will inevitably lead to fewer postdocs, and researchers will be forced to either scale back their own efforts or rely more significantly on training and sustaining technicians and undergraduates.

We hear increasingly that the trend now is to encourage and support interdisciplinary research. Large consortia of researchers from a variety of disciplines are collaborating to solve "big" problems, many of which have social, scientific, and even humanistic implications. Policy makers and administrators encourage these types of activities and have urged faculty to seek out collaborators and the large program project grants that might arise from such interactions. And yet our system of incentives, put in place largely by the faculty and governed by the faculty, continues to lag behind. Promotion and tenure committees still insist that an individual's contribution be devoted almost exclusively to a single, focused, or discipline-specific research initiative. Multiple collaborations are still not as highly valued as single-authored papers or the individual research grant. Despite the rhetoric of those in Washington and many here at home, the incentives and real rewards for large, interdisciplinary collaborations are best left for those who are tenured and fully promoted. This does not serve our young faculty well, nor does it encourage eventual changes in behavior toward collaborative interactions once the faculty member has established a career as a scholar. Indeed, we continue to encourage and reward the "independent contractor" and "individual entrepreneur," both terms that have been used to describe faculty and faculty behavior.

Amidst all this, the Dean sits in a most interesting place: close enough to the faculty to understand the drive and motivation behind research, scholarship, and the creative enterprise, and yet positioned to see and understand the "bigger picture" in terms of how research interfaces with the university and beyond. A dean is often confronted by a public that clearly has little appreciation for or understanding of the connection between research and teaching. Outreach and development activities have become essential roles for a Dean, and I would argue that they should be roles that faculty should at least appreciate and embrace as important to their long-term health and survival. The primary focus of the faculty should continue to be their involvement in the research and teaching that are essential to universities. At the same time, they should not be afraid to engage in active discourse with segments of the population outside the university for the purpose of sharing the passion and enthusiasm that comes with successful activities in the laboratory and classroom. Indeed, we hurt our cause and our image when students, parents, alums, or the public at large fail to understand the connection between research and teaching. When faculty fail or refuse to explain the significance of their scholarly endeavors publicly, we are not fully engaged in the multiple activities that are a part of our overall mission. If we look only inward, we miss opportunities to partner with business and the corporate world in ways that might be mutually beneficial. If we look only inward, we train students who are ill-prepared to face the rapidly changing times and technology that face us all now and in the future.

There is little room or reason for pessimism in today's society, especially where higher education is concerned. The ideas, opportunities, and investments that have been spawned from our research universities literally drive the world's economies. While the physical structure of our universities may not change significantly over the decades, the personnel involved in the enterprise--faculty, students, administrators--and the world around us does and will continue to change, and with this dynamic flux will come new ideas, new technologies, and new ways of thinking and analyzing our world and its problems. I can think of no more exciting time in history to be involved in research and higher education than as we approach a new millenium.