- Primary research focus. A designated center (DC)
should be devoted exclusively or at least primarily to research.
The principal activities of a DC should
involve scholarly and creative activities and dissemination
of the results through publications and other means.
- Prestige. A DC should
have significant national/international prestige as judged
for example by qualified outsiders. Another measure of prestige
is the production of publications in refereed journals, books,
and other scholarly and creative works. Center members should
present papers or give performances at prestigious national
and international venues and should serve as editors and reviewers
of journals, conferences, and the like.
- Large volume of external funding. External funding is critical
to building a program of sustainable research. External funding
is also an excellent validation of the quality of a researcher's
work. In order to qualify as a DC,
the unit should attract a large amount of external funding
both in absolute terms and in terms of funding per researcher.
In all cases, what constitutes "large" depends on
the theme of the DC.
Units in well-funded areas should be at, or able to reasonably
target in the future, $10 million in annual external funding
expenditures. Units in areas that are typically not well funded
would have lower thresholds accordingly. The key is critical
mass. Obtaining funding for the sake of funding is inappropriate,
and in all cases it is assumed that external funding is relevant
and truly supports the researcher's program.
- Return on investment. There will be investment in the DCs.
In turn, a DC must
provide a significant return on investment. Financial return
can be measured for example by the total of external funds
attracted and indirect return generated. Other measures of
return include faculty members winning prestigious awards and
the success of the students going through the DC in
obtaining positions in their field.
- Interdisciplinary. Strength will accrue to the truly interdisciplinary
units. "Interdisciplinary" must reach further than
narrow boundaries, i.e. distinctions within an academic department. DC themes
that truly touch several schools and even campuses represent
interdisciplinary efforts, but other measures could be used.
In general, a qualified outside observer should be able to
easily judge whether a unit is interdisciplinary or not.
- Benefit to the researchers. Researchers should want to join
a DC, because
it provides benefits that they could not otherwise realize.
It is the synergism that successful centers create through
pooling and sharing of resources, infrastructure, and critical
mass that makes them powerful as opposed to being merely a
collection of people calling themselves a center. A DC must "look
and feel" like a research center. The infrastructure that
a DC provides
to the researchers could range from a full service center like LSI that
provides proposal services, accounting, appointments, hiring,
space management, etc. to one that uses KUCR for
many of these services but provides space management, DC administration,
sharing of resources, and clerical support.
- Academic ties. While university research has great benefit
to society both in terms of expanding human knowledge and in
fueling the economic engine of the nation, the fundamental
reason for conducting university research is learning. Research
with no ties to the academic mission of the university should
be questioned. Graduate students, and in many cases undergraduate
students, should be active participants in the research activities
of a DC. The bulk
of the researchers in the centers should be full-time faculty
members, faculty members with split appointments in the DC and
one or more academic units, or full-time DC funded
researchers with courtesy appointments in one or more academic
units.
Questions? Please contact:
Linda Crawford
785-864-7298 |lcrawford@ku.edu
Assistant to the Vice Provost | Office of Research and Graduate Studies
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