Site Team Report

8. Research

The Michigan Tech mission and vision statements recognize the central role of research in enabling the university to fulfill its purposes. Goal 4 of the Michigan Tech Strategic Plan targets the enhancement and expansion of research, scholarship and creative activities within the university. Consequently, administrators, faculty, staff and students are focusing considerable attention on planning and implementing growth in both research and graduate education. Research expenditures have doubled in the past 10 years and are projected to double again within the next five years. Several new graduate programs have been added and more are planned.

Although much attention has focused on plans for expansion of research and graduate education, and several adjustments have been made to encourage or accommodate growth, much more adjustment will have to occur if the projected targets for classification as a Carnegie Research II institution are met.

Recently two consultants from the Council of Graduate Schools reviewed the work of the Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate College (report of January 1997.) In that report they noted that the current staffing within this office was lean, but highly productive for its size. They warned that this leanness could be highly problematic if the projected growth occurred.

One year later there is even more reason for concern that the research support services, accounting and other required infrastructure (such as oversight of environmental, safety, and integrity issues) will not easily accommodate the projected growth without some additions to the staff and systematic changes in the ways in which oversight responsibilities are implemented. Informal attention to individual research projects and personnel is possible when the total enterprise is relatively small, but growth to date has stretched present oversight capabilities. The projected growth will put the University in danger of not being able to adequately meet its oversight responsibilities unless it takes specific steps to increase its capacity to do so. Failure to act is both a financial danger and a danger to the overall quality of graduate education and research. [Concern 3]

If the goal of doubling research funding within the next five years is to be met, more attention will have to be given to strategies for attracting additional funding as well as to incentives for doing so. University administrators are to be commended for increasing institutional investments in starting new initiatives through matching funds and through the funding of the start-up of new research initiatives and new faculty members on campus. The latter cost will continue to increase, both on a per individual basis and to accommodate more new faculty members. Appropriate planning for the needed resources will be important.

New physical facilities for research that are currently under construction will provide much needed incentives and new opportunities for attracting additional research funding. On the other hand, the cost of operating these new facilities will be appreciable, as will be the cost of renovating the space vacated by the programs that occupy the new facilities. It is not clear that the university has made sufficient plans for covering these additional costs, but such plans should be in place so that realistic expectations are developed on the part of all involved. In this regard much hope is being placed on the potential for private funding to help with equipment and with needed library resources. The University is in the middle of a major capital campaign and is confident of success. [Concerns 2, 3, 5]

The university will face a special challenge in fostering creative activity on the part of the arts faculty and continuing to encourage excellent scholarship on the part of the humanities when more and more emphasis is placed on attracting sponsored funding for the natural and social sciences and for engineering. Special care must be taken to continue to recognize outstanding scholarship and creative works by the entire faculty even as the university must focus on sponsored funding and the attendant oversight responsibilities.

Attention to the synergistic relationship between teaching and research both at the undergraduate and graduate levels is important and should continue. Emphases on multidisciplinary research approaches to problem solving and on pushing the frontiers of knowledge at the interfaces between disciplines will also be important aids to research development at Michigan Tech. Recent research initiatives in cooperation with several other universities are commendable and these types of collaborations should be encouraged.

Special sensitivity to issues of integrity in research and technology transfer exists at Michigan Tech as a result of the earlier problems that developed in the operations within a for-profit organization, Ventures (established within a not-for-profit entity, ESI), for the purpose of promoting technology transfer and economic development. The university should develop new efforts to promote economic development, perhaps including an incubator for technology-based start-up companies, along conventional lines used by many universities and should assure that these efforts have appropriate oversight. At present, the potential that Michigan Tech has for contributing to economic development in the Upper Peninsula area is not being fully realized. [Suggestion 12]

Recent improvements in the management of intellectual property at Michigan Tech are evident. Continued development of the intellectual property program will be required if it is to serve an increasing number of inventors in an increasingly complex legal environment. Clear statements of the university's expectations for this program and strong educational efforts to increase the sophistication of the university community regarding software protection, copyrights, patents, and other means of intellectual property protection will be important to the program's continued success.

Policies and procedures to protect the integrity of the research and technology transfer programs at Michigan Tech have been developed. Some of these are not fully approved by the Board of Control, which has been slow in acting on some that have been brought forward from the university. It is important that up-to-date policies and procedures be in place that cover employees' professional relationships with non-university entities and that provide for oversight of honesty and integrity in research. [Concern 6]

The next few years will provide exciting opportunities for Michigan Tech researchers to further develop research and technology transfer at the university. These opportunities can be seized if the university is able to provide adequate support and oversight for a larger and more complex set of research and graduate education programs. Careful planning and successful strategies for obtaining necessary resources will result in valuable contributions to the well-being of this region, to Michigan, and in significant ways to the nation.

Research Institutes

As with the environmental and international programs noted in Chapter 3 of this report, the Self Study report does not have a special section on research institutes and centers per se. The modern history of Michigan Tech's research institutes and centers began with the creation by the State of Michigan of the Institute for Wood Research (IWR), the Institute for Minerals Research (now the Institute of Materials Processing, IMP) and the Bureau of Industrial Development (now defunct). These institutes were located in Houghton and functioned, initially, as independent budget units of Michigan Tech. Subsequently, these institutes have become parts of individual schools and colleges.

In addition to the three university wide institutes mentioned above, the Keweenaw Research Center (KRC) was established with support from the U.S. Army to conduct cold weather vehicle mobility tests and research. Ownership of these facilities were transferred to Michigan Tech in 1993. Unlike the other research institutes, KRC currently is wholly self supporting. Another university wide research center is the National Center for Clean Industrial and Treatment Technologies (CenCITT), though given its association with the Department of Civil Engineering and the principal investigator from that department, the campus perception is that CenCITT is a program of that department.

Initially, all of the above institutes functioned as agencies that existed outside a specific academic unit; their primary function initially was to serve as the development arm of a research and development operation. Over the past half dozen years, however, the concept of research institutes have undergone change. The traditional institutes are now becoming more closely affiliated with departments. IWR, for example, has been completely merged with the School of Forestry and Wood Products; in actuality, IWR has become an academic department within SFWP, possessing its own faculty with tenure lines, and its own courses and academic programs. IMP is moving closer and closer towards departmental status in Engineering. Indeed, recently even the wholly self-supporting KRC which has functioned as the most independent unit among the established institutes and which has been receiving a return of 80% of indirect costs, is now moving towards a closer affiliation with the College of Engineering. As this occurs, and as overhead support inevitably shifts somewhat to the College, KRC will need to receive additional Michigan Tech support to maintain it operation.

The case of the new Institute for Remote Sensing and Environmental Monitoring, however, reflects the flexibility of research institute design and operation and the willingness of the Michigan Tech administration to create appropriate structures and mechanisms to respond to opportunities and solid faculty initiatives with high research promise. Because of the truly cross departmental/cross college nature of this new Institute, the faculty have requested and the Vice Provost for Research has agreed for the Institute to report directly to him.

Likewise, Michigan Tech has encouraged research institutes and exercised flexibility in providing seed funding for new, interdisciplinary, faculty-driven endeavors such as the Institute for Remote Sensing. In this instance, for three years Michigan Tech will contribute an extra 12% of indirect cost above the approximately 26% normally divided among the principal investigator, the department and the school/college.

Michigan Tech's strategic plan to double research funding over the next five years may place heavy responsibilities on the university-wide research institutes. Although the institutes and centers have been part of the research effort for many years and have evolved over time, there has not been a formal mechanism in place to review them on a periodic basis to determine program quality, effectiveness, direction and continued viability. This is why the team feels that Michigan Tech should develop a procedure for conducting thorough scheduled reviews of the quality and productivity of existing research institutes and centers.[Concern 6]

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