DOUBLING RESEARCH: FINAL REPORT
Victoria L. Champion,
Yaobin Chen,
Pamela L. Crowell,
Janice C. Froehlich,
Richard L. Gregory,
Gerry S Oxford,
Julie J. Mcgowan,
Eric Wright,
Task Force Report on the Doubling of Research,
Scholarly and Creative Activity
Chancellor Bantz charged the task
force to develop a plan to double IUPUI’s research, scholarly and creative
activities in conjunction with parallel efforts to double graduation rates,
civic engagement, and diversity by 2010.
While this represents a significant challenge, it also matches the
aspirations of most people employed or associated with the campus.
During the past 10 years,
our research and sponsored funding has grown by a factor of 2.7. This includes a major gift of $155 million
from the Lilly Endowment to support the Indiana Genomics Initiative
(INGEN). Without this one time gift, the
growth rate is 2.21 over the past 10 years.
In 2003, grants and contracts totaled $215.9 million plus a one time
grant of $50 million from the Lilly Endowment for the INGEN project. The
To increase our sponsored
funding to $430 million by 2010 will require changes in a number of current
practices as well as significant investments in various aspects of campus
research endeavors. While it is
inappropriate for the task force to micromanage a doubling initiative, it is
our objective to provide a framework for how the doubling may be
accomplished.
The "Productive
Investigator and Scholar" is the engine that drives the research
enterprise at any university. The
existence of all research-related activities and offices on campus depends on
the continued success of the investigator in obtaining and
maintaining external funding. Without the investigator/scholar there
is no need for animal care facilities (e.g. LARC), a biosafety office, an
Institutional Review Board, a Research and Sponsored Programs
office, laboratory research space, research centers or research
cores. Accordingly, in order to increase research productivity, we must
create an environment that allows us to recruit and retain productive
investigators. This will require that we
provide the necessary space, technology, information resources, tools, support
structure, and incentives to maximize the abilities of our investigators. The Task Force on Doubling Research has
explored many ways in which this can be accomplished. Judicious investments will have to be made
together with revisions of existing policies and practices.
Recruiting outstanding research investigators: As stated above, productive research investigators
and scholars are the core of a vibrant research university. We are fortunate to
already have many outstanding investigators amongst our faculty. However, it is
clear we need to have a greater proportion of our faculty actively engaged in
scholarship and research and seeking external funding to support these efforts.
For many of the IUPUI schools, this will mean filling available faculty
positions with individuals who have the appropriate training and interests to
engage in productive research and scholarship.
For the
Supporting the New Investigator – In order to support the new investigator and
maximize the establishment of a productive research career, we need to provide
competitive faculty work arrangements, set-up packages, research initiation
grants, proposal development services, and mentoring. We need to recruit new faculty who exhibit
high potential of being leaders in their discipline. Tenure decisions for faculty whose area of
excellence is research and scholarship should be based on accomplishments
demonstrating a trajectory toward national/international prominence in their
discipline.
Faculty Work Arrangements: Faculty
work should be organized to allow new investigators the time needed to
establish a research career through publication and grant writing. While the specific arrangements for
individual faculty will vary across schools, schools may wish to release new
research faculty from service and/or teaching responsibilities early in their careers
at IUPUI. in order to encourage new
faculty to reach the highest level of research productivity as early as
possible.
Set-up Packages: New
investigators expect the university to provide the instrumentation, computers
and operating funds necessary to successfully compete for external funding. The funds required to support the new
investigator/scholar will vary amongst schools and will be highest in those
schools involved in bench (wet laboratory) research. It should be noted that these are the same
schools that have the greatest opportunity to obtain significant external
funding which generates indirect cost revenue for the School and the
University. One way to limit the need
for large set-up packages is to provide a wide range of core facilities.
Research Initiation Grants: In the current
funding environment, it is essential that we do everything possible to help our
investigators be competitive. To
successfully obtain external funding not only must the investigator/scholar
present an exciting idea, but the capacity to execute the proposed work must
also be demonstrated. Preliminary data
are generally required to demonstrate to
grant reviewers that the proposed work
is feasible. The establishment of
a campus-level competitive funding mechanism to support investigators while
they acquire preliminary data in support of an external grant application that
is either pending or in preparation would be valuable.
Mentoring: All new
investigators should be encouraged to select a senior investigator who will
serve as a mentor and help them launch their career of research and scholarship
at IUPUI. The task force recognizes that
mentoring is a large responsibility for the senior investigator/scholar and
hence the act of mentoring must be recognized within the faculty reward
structure in a substantive and measurable way. The success of the mentee
(grants and papers) should also accrue, in part, to the mentor.
Supporting the Established Investigator
Proposal Development Services: All
investigators and scholars would benefit from assistance in identifying
appropriate agencies interested in supporting their research activities. In addition, many investigators would be
advantaged by assistance in writing competitive grant proposals. Although IUPUI currently has such a service
available on campus, too few faculty take advantage of this resource. One of the limiting factors has been the
absence of funds to support faculty attendance at summer workshops on proposal
development. Deans are encouraged to
make this program available to all faculty.
Provide
Incentives for Success and Risk-Taking: IUPUI needs to provide
incentives for successfully obtaining external funding and rewards to
individuals who accept the risk of relying on external support for all or part
of their salary. Data from other
universities demonstrate that a higher success rate in obtaining external
funding is achieved when rewards are provided.
The task force recommends that the IUPUI schools consider the following
approaches to providing rewards for grant success and risk-taking, though a
uniform approach for the entire campus would be ideal.
1. Make
transparent how the Facilities & Administrative (indirect) costs that
accrue to the University are used. One
approach to rewarding grant success is to return a portion of F&A recovery
to the units that generated it, and ideally, to the investigators that
generated it. Presently the practice of
returning indirect cost recovery funds to the investigator varies widely amongst
the IUPUI schools with some schools returning no funds while others are
returning up to 15% of the earned F&A to the investigator. It is recommended that F&A funds also be
used to provide support services that directly benefit the investigator’s
research activities.
2. Provide standard course release time based on
demonstrated research productivity.
3. Provide a
cash bonus to investigators based upon their success in obtaining grants. Such
bonuses cannot be charged to grants, but could be paid from salary savings,
F&A income, or other departmental resources. Care must be taken not to allow such a bonus
system to undermine the value of teaching or service responsibilities.
4. Provide Bridge Funding: The growth in the NIH budget has slowed
dramatically in the past year and is likely to be flat for the next several
years. Hence, new grants and competing
renewals of existing grants are becoming more difficult to obtain. All investigators need to have “bridge funding”
available and this can be accomplished in several ways. One approach would be to create a
University-level competitive funding mechanism that can provide the
investigator with “bridge” funding and the opportunity to continue productive
research during the time that competitive, but imperfect grants are revised and
resubmitted for external funding.
Another approach would be to allow a portion of salary savings to be
returned to the investigator to be used in the investigator’s research
activities or saved for the purpose of covering potential future lapses in
external funding. Unused salary savings
would be returned to the department when the investigator retires or leaves the
University.
Support New
Research and Scholarship Initiatives: It is equally important to provide access for
established investigators to research initiation grants as it is for new
investigators. Established investigators are not allowed to use external
funding to initiate projects outside the scope of their current grants. Thus,
IUPUI must establish a competitive University-level funding mechanism to allow
established investigators to initiate new projects and generate preliminary
data to support new grant applications and to support collaborative
initiatives.
Provide
Access to Core Research Facilities and Technologies: One of the advantages afforded by the INGEN grant
has been the establishment of a variety of research core facilities that
contain state-of-art instrumentation, cutting-edge technologies, and staff
expertise. Investigators can make use of
these facilities which would be prohibitively expensive to create within their
own laboratories. Judicious addition of other specialized facilities should be
pursued, especially when they directly enhance the research activities of high
priority programs. It is important to
have a process that regularly assesses the value added by specific core
units. Cores that continue to provide
cutting edge technology or cost efficiencies should be sustained, while those
whose services are available commercially with appropriate quality and cost
should be closed. A number of other
research support services need to be subsidized by the University in order to
allow new and established investigators to remain competitive in today’s
research environment. University support will be especially important for
schools that don’t have the needed infrastructure to support development of
research. Support needs to be provided
in the following areas:
1. Provide statistical, informatics and assessment
consulting during grant preparation
2. Reduce animal care costs - it should be noted that
the costs at IUPUI are higher than those found at comparable institutions.
3. Provide clinical research support services
4. Enhance the
existing, and establish new, relationships with government, corporate,
and civic organizations to facilitate community-focused research and
scholarship
5. Expand technological resources to support research
and scholarship (e.g. high performance computing, electronic and
tele-conferencing facilities for inter-campus and inter-university
collaborators)
6. Cultivate and
maintain technologically-trained, and well-compensated professional staff to
assist investigators and scholars in the research enterprise
7. Provide low-cost electronic and physical resources to
investigators for the secure storage of archival data and documents created
through research and scholarship
Enhance Core Research Services: Investigators
need access to high quality research
services for grant preparation and dissemination of findings Changes are needed to:
1. Insure that library and information resources receive
adequate funding to acquire materials in support of new and expanding research
initiatives
2. Foster the use of campus-based, low-cost,
professional visual media services to effectively communicate research findings and to promote the research institution
Revise Research Support Services: Every research support service should be examined,
with input from the research investigators and staff, in order to identify ways
to make the services more user friendly and to minimize unnecessary
burdens. An initial examination by the
Task Force has identified several areas in which changes need to be made:
1.
Streamline administrative processes and minimize excess paper work and
information gathering in several research-related areas such as biosafety, and animal
care and use.
2.
Provide adequate staffing within schools and within the Office of Research and
Sponsored Programs to assure proposals are submitted on time. Retrain existing staff and hire additional
staff (perhaps funded by the F&A income) to prepare and process all
portions of grant applications except those describing the science. This support may be provided at the school or
campus level or both.
3.
Provide computer-based technologies for efficient management of workflow to
support the research grant application, preparation, and submission process.
Increase the number of undergraduates
participating in research and scholarship activities: Undergraduate research and scholarship
enhances the learning experience of the student and increases their
competitiveness for placement in the workforce, graduate programs, or
professional schools. At the same time, undergraduate research enhance the productivity of the research
investigator and students with undergraduate research experience can then be recruited into the IUPUI graduate programs.
Increase the number of graduate
students and postdoctoral fellows participating in research and scholarship: Graduate
students and postdoctoral fellows are key elements of a robust research and scholarship
program. Their creativity and energy
often help push the boundaries of discovery and analysis. To prepare students to have successful
careers in research and scholarship, they need to be provided with
opportunities to participate in multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary
programs. It is recommended that IUPUI
increase the number of graduate student fellowships to allow for recruitment
of high quality students. We also should judiciously add new
interdisciplinary graduate programs.
Promoting Collaborations: Collaborative
research has advanced many fields of research and scholarship during the past
decade. For IUPUI to fully realize its
potential we must facilitate greater engagement in collaborative research. This should occur among schools on campus and
with colleagues on the IUB and PU-WL campuses.
Facilitate collaborations among
existing IUPUI centers: The mission-focused nature of research and
scholarship being carried out at IUPUI is not surprising given its central
geographic location in the State and the prominent role that faculty and staff
play in economic and community development of the region through pre-professional and professional education
programs. Over the years, six major areas of research and scholarship have
emerged at IUPUI with demonstrated
scholarly excellence 1) basic
life science, 2) applied life and health science, 3) informatics and
technology, 4) physical and environmental science, 5) public policy and applied
social research, 6) community arts and humanities, and 7) the scholarship of
teaching and learning. While these
categories do not capture all of the high-quality work being conducted by IUPUI
faculty and staff, they do represent areas where large numbers of faculty and
staff are working, where significant accomplishments have been demonstrated,
and where IUPUI faculty and staff are likely to be particularly successful in
seeking external funding in the future because of the concentrated expertise
and growing reputation of scholars in these areas.
It
also important to understand that while basic and applied life and health
sciences represent a major focus of the research and scholarly activity at
IUPUI, these domains are connected with the other domains both in terms of work
that overlaps in substantive ways and in terms of collaborations among scholars
from different areas of excellence.
These relationships, as well as the prominence of basic and applied life
science, are depicted graphically below.
Indeed, much of the ongoing work being carried out in the major schools
within IUPUI can be classified as falling into one or more of these areas). While this diagram, and the notion of
domains of excellence in research and scholarship, focuse attention on a
limited number of areas, it is important to recognize the potential for the
development of new areas of excellence in a comprehensive research
institution.
Currently,
at IUPUI, there are a number of examples of ongoing multidisciplinary and
interschool research activities and
centers as diagrammed above. Among the most well known of the
multidisciplinary centers are: the IU
Center for Aging Research; the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University,
Indiana University Center for Bioethics; the Bowen Research Center; and the
Bio-Mechanics Research Laboratory. There
are also a number of other formal entities on campus which have been the site
of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, including the
Given
our principal aim to double research, scholarship, and creative activity at
IUPUI in the next seven years, a particularly promising strategy would be to
target existing areas of excellence in research and scholarship for further
development in order to take advantage of emerging opportunities to serve local
and regional needs. While this is
clearly being undertaken in the graduate and professional schools, we must work
to more fully incorporate IUPUI faculty
in units serving undergraduates. By
carefully connecting these existing domains of excellence in research and
scholarship with IUPUI’s overall mission to the serve the local, state, and
national community, we may also help to generate a synergy at IUPUI that will
motivate faculty to engage in more creative and scholarly activity and define
the role of IUPUI in the region and nation more clearly.
While
there are a variety of mechanisms that could be employed to facilitate
collaboration among faculty , a central aim should be to bring faculty together
to regularly discuss common interests and possible collaborations and to seek
external support for projects. In this
regard, we recommend the creation of campus-wide initiatives targeting the
existing domains of excellence in research and scholarship in order to bring
together existing centers as well as individual faculty to generate interest in
carrying out collaborative inter- and multi-disciplinary research, scholarship,
and creative activity OK The focus of
each initiative is intentionally broad to create the largest umbrella possible
while still facilitating the development of a focused area of activity.
Foster collaborations with IUB and PU-WL: With the
number of internationally recognized researchers located at IUB and PU-WL,
every effort should be made to encourage collaborations between these campuses
and IUPUI investigators. There are unlimited possibilities of creating
unique new multidisciplinary collaborations by linking our great strengths in
basic life sciences, and applied life and health sciences, coupled with
information technology, public policy and applied social sciences, physical and
environmental science, and community arts and humanities with researchers
located at IUB and PU-WL.
Enhance the diversity of researchers and scholars: To have a robust core of investigators, we must
enhance the participation of individuals of diverse backgrounds who engage in
research and scholarship on the IUPUI campus.
This includes the undergraduate students, graduate students,
postdoctoral researchers, faculty, and support staff. We also need to reach out to engage K-12 students
to have them understand the excitement and rewards of being involved in research
and scholarship.
Engage in research that is mindful of the rich
patterning that is characteristic of the human condition: There are
already a number of exemplary research programs on the IUPUI campus that
directly address minority health care issues and cultural competence. These range from health sciences to law,
social work, philanthropy, and public policy and environmental affairs. It is important that we continue to build on
these activities of engagement and that we
find additional r ways to provide greater understanding and solutions
that support our diverse community.
Expand space for research and scholarship - We will not be able to substantially increase the
number of productive research investigators unless we are able to provide them
with adequate space in which to conduct their research and scholarly
activities. Vice President McRobbie has
surveyed research needs for the University, and in a draft report, he has
estimated the current unmet research-space needs of the IUPUI campus to be
374,635 of assignable sq. ft. However,
assessing the specific sq. ft. needs for each school is a challenge. The School of Medicine has completed a space
analysis in comparison with peer institutions that has served to define their
space needs. A similar procedure now
needs to be applied to all of the schools within IUPUI. Allocation of space within schools will need
to remain a school-level decision since a single formula will not fit all
schools well. Some schools may tie
allocations to the level of external funding while others may assess the need
for space based on scholarly productivity relevant to the investigator’s
discipline. It is important that schools
regularly review assignments of space to ensure that one of our most limited
resources is being used productively. It
will be a special challenge to construct new space for those programs that are
not able to generate external support through
full overhead cost recovery.
Outcome measures: Implementation of the recommendations of the Task Force on Doubling
Research should result in several measurable outcomes including the following:
- Increase in the proportion of the faculty who
engage in research
- Increase in the level of funding per
investigator
- Increase in the overall level of research
support
- Increase in the number of researchers engaged in
interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research programs
- Increase in the number of interdisciplinary or
multidisciplinary research programs
- Increase in the representation of people of
diverse backgrounds who are engaged in research and scholarship
Appendix 1.
|
New “Initiative” |
Potential Disciplinary Areas of Research and
Scholarly Expertise |
Sample of Potential Collaborating Centers/Institutes |
|
Basic Life Science Research
Initiative |
Medical Science, Nursing,
Allied Health Science, Medical Technology, Public Health, Health Services
Research |
· IU Center on Aging · Bowen Research Center · Indiana University Center for Bioethics · Bio-Mechanics Research
Laboratory · Center for Regenerative
Biology and Medicine |
|
Applied Life And Health
Science Research Initiative |
Medical Science, Nursing,
Allied Health Science, Medical Technology, Public Health, Health Services
Research, Medical Humanities |
· IU Center on Aging · Bowen Research Center · Indiana University Center for Bioethics |
|
Informatics and New
Technology Initiative |
Informatics, Engineering,
Physical Sciences |
· School of Informatics · Bio-Mechanics Research
Laboratory · Institute for Forensic
Imaging |
|
Physical and Environmental
Science Initiative |
Physical and Natural
Sciences, SPEA, Social Science, Business |
· Center for Earth and Environmental Science · Facility for Computational Molecular Science |
|
Initiative for Applied
Research on Social Issues |
Social Services, Public
Policy Research, Applied Social Science, Business, SPEA |
· Polis Center · Center on Philanthropy · IU Public Opinion Laboratory · Indiana University Center for Bioethics |
|
Community Arts and
Humanities Initiative |
Humanities, Music, Theater,
Language and Linguistics |
· Institute for American Thought · Theater/Music Departments and Programs · Center for the Study of Religion and American
Culture · Center for Bioethics |
|
Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning Initiative |
Research on Higher
Education, Teaching Strategies, Service Learning |
· Center for Economic Education · Center for Urban and Multicultural Education · Center for Service Learning · Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication |