by Joe Sullivan
The plight of UT's Economics Department, as portrayed in this week's feature story, is symptomatic of the malnutrition afflicting the university as a whole. After seven lean years during which state funding has scarcely increased, let alone kept pace with most surrounding states, UT has, in the words of its new president J. Wade Gilley, "drifted into a non-competitive position."
Yet even in a year when the state's fiscal bind appears more taut than ever, Gilley is bent on procuring "jump start money" toward fulfilling a lofty five-year goal. That goal is to lift UT from near the bottom of the heap among state universities to one of the top 25 in the nation.
While he's got a long list of criteria for measuring UT's standing, its ability to attract federal research dollars ranks foremost among them. He projects that a doubling of federal research grants to $150 million annually by 2005 would vault UT into the top 25. And he insists that, "A top-tier research university is a vital element in a vibrant state economy.
Gilley's emphasis is quite different from that of his predecessors on getting more state funding primarily in order to bring laggard faculty salaries at UT back into line with those of its peers. Gilley wants to do that, too; but the $30 million grant he's seeking to jump start the creation of seven academic centers of excellence is getting a better reception in Nashville. With Gov. Don Sundquist's backing, the Senate Education Committee recommended its approval, whereas the $84 million in additional funding for higher education generally that Sundquist has proposed is caught in budgetary gridlock that can only be broken by legislative agreement on some sort of state tax increase.
In order to qualify for the $30 million, UT would have to match the state outlay four-to-one from other sources over a period of up to five years. The $30 million in prospective savings claimed from Gilley's extensive administrative downsizing could count toward the match. Consideration is also being given to applying some of the $25 million that UT received by way of reimbursements from UT Medical Center when it was spun off last year. At least $60 million of the matching money, though, would have to come from a private fund-raising campaign. While the university has had a lot of success in raising endowment money, only the income from these capital contributions can be spent—typically for donor-specified purposes. Raising $60 million in spendable funds would be unprecedented, but Gilley is determined to get his jump start money.
The seven centers of excellence have yet to be selected, but Gilley says, "We'd hope to identify at least two of them by summer and set them in motion during the upcoming academic year." A prime candidate is an ophthalmology center at the medical school in Memphis, probably in partnership with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Biotechnology is also high on the list, and Gilley mentions materials science, computational sciences, information technology and bioinformatics (a marriage of biotech and genetics) as other possibilities.
He stresses, though, that, "These are not final, and we don't want to identify everything at once. We want to let the selection process stimulate the faculty. Faculty members may come up with something unique that we wouldn't want to rule out."
Once selected, each of the seven centers would get between $15 million and $20 million to make them fully competitive in seeking what Gilley terms "the huge amounts of new federal money that are becoming available." The UT money would go for adding research faculty positions (on the order of 50 in toto), fellowships for top-flight graduate students and—critically— building and equipping new laboratories.
"We need to make an up front investment in the laboratories in order to become competitive. If you build them, then you've got a major tool to work with in attracting all the rest," Gilley says. And he professes confidence that the rest will follow.
"The National Institutes of Health alone has $4 billion a year, and that's expected to double over the next five years. If we can just be successful in getting incremental amounts, we should be able to meet our goal." Moreover, once the research dollars start flowing, Gilley believes the centers can become largely self-sustaining. "When you get a dollar of NIH money, 42 cents goes for administration," he points out.
The emphasis on research extends to the Committee on the Future of UT which Gilley appointed last fall and whose final report is expected by month's end. The committee is chaired by Douglas Oleson, chairman of the Battelle Memorial Institute with whom UT is partnering in the management of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In a preliminary report to the UT Board of Trustees in February, the committee identified five "Potential Themes for UT Distinctiveness" as follows: (1) Capitalize on ORNL contract; (2) Focus on serving the regional auto industry; (3) Use information technology to enhance teaching; (4) Focus on biotechnologies and (5) Expand continuing education opportunities.
All of which raises the question whether UT is going overboard on research while underserving its undergraduate students by allowing departments such as economics to atrophy.
Gilley insists that such is not the case. "There's a direct correlation between research and the quality of undergraduate instruction. You can't be a great undergraduate university without having that [research] faculty," he asserts. Moreover, he points out that $15 million to $20 million of the $150 million excellence fund is earmarked for existing faculty. How and when that money gets deployed will depend in no small part on whether the state comes through with the 6 percent faculty salary raises recommended in the Sundquist budget.
Another $10 million to $15 million of the $150 million is set aside for scholarships aimed at doubling the number of National Merit Scholars attending UT as well as the number of students ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class. Along with research revenues, Gilley's "key ranking parameters" for determining top 25 status include quality of undergraduate student body, quality of faculty and quality of graduate and professional programs.
Gilley's ambitious jump-start program would at least get UT headed in the right direction on some of these accounts. But it remains to be seen whether the state legislature will approve its share of the funding, let alone the much larger sums needed for higher education to make sustained progress on a statewide basis.
March 23, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 12
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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