Research Policies Committee Retreat Notes
Friday, December 11, 1998
10:00-12:00 noon, 4006 Fleming

RPC members present: Andrew Aguirre, Jack East, Richard Ford, Roberto Kampfner, Jill Macoska, Roberto Merlin, David Musch, Joseph Rahme, Anil Subramani, Ben van der Pluijm (chair), Teshome Wagaw
OVPR staff present: Judy Nowack, Julie Ellison, Lee Katterman, Fred Neidhardt, Marvin Parnes, Jackie Hoats-Shields
Guests: Fawwaz Ulaby, Gary Krenz

The November RPC notes were approved with a change to the second paragraph under "Updates from the Chair" to reflect the fact that RPC members did not give individual comments to the Provost regarding the VPR candidates. The comments of RPC members were summarized by the chair and then sent to the Provost.

Updates from OVPR
Discussion with Fawwaz Ulaby
Fred Neidhardt introduced Fawwaz Ulaby, who is the Arthur F. Thurnau, R. Jamison and Betty Williams Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in addition to becoming Interim Vice President for Research on January 1. Neidhardt noted that Ulaby is very active in both research and teaching. He has been in OVPR frequently this month in order to become familiar with the processes and current initiatives. For instance, Ulaby will attend this afternoon when OVPR has an introductory briefing for incoming Regents Brandon and White. Neidhardt said he feels great confidence leaving OVPR in Ulaby's hands.

Fawwaz Ulaby told RPC that as Interim Vice President he plans to spend his initial time in OVPR learning more about its processes and initiatives and how it fits in with the academic mission of the University. He then would like to work on articulating a mission statement for research at UM and to work toward presenting this to the outside, addressing where we are going as a community. Ulaby would like to learn more about specialty fields and those which are far from his own, in addition to working on issues related to faculty and researchers across campus. Ulaby noted there have been more and more federal regulations placed on research over the last 30 years, and one result is that now faculty are not just scholars but they must also be entrepreneurs. Another result is that much of a researcher's time must now be devoted to activities not directly related to their research. In addition to looking at these issue regarding faculty, Ulaby is also very interested in undergraduate research initiatives. He noted that UROP is a great resource for students but only a fraction of the student body can participate in UROP because of the student to faculty ratio. Ulaby said through increased faculty participation he would like to see a significant increase in the number of students who can take part in UROP.

NSF Annual Survey of Research Expenditures
Fred Neidhardt recalled a point made by Bob Samors at the last RPC meeting about the need to be less hesitant to acknowledge UM's status as a top research institution. Neidhardt distributed recently released data from NSF showing that UM ranks first in research expenditures among U.S. universities and colleges. He noted that the financial awards earned by UM researchers are competitive and thus reflect the quality of the research and scholarship.

Interdisciplinary Research
Fred Neidhardt said during last month's discussion of interdisciplinary research there were important points made regarding the barriers to such work. He said the University is now challenged from an additional angle to consider its interdisciplinary activities as it prepares for its North Central Accreditation. John Godfrey of the Provost's office is leading this enterprise, and he is preparing a report on how we are doing currently in interdisciplinary work and how we can improve. In addition, there will be four working groups of faculty, one of which is focused on research including the extent and value of structures for the administration, funding, and review of collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives. Neidhardt said OVPR will present the working group with a briefing book on the current picture. RPC has been noted as one of the voices that OVPR will want to see in this working group. This week OVPR will look at the charge and recommend faculty for the group, and John Godfrey's office will make the final selections. Neidhardt said that in a parallel effort the Academic Program Group (APG) Subcommittee on Research is currently looking at the way units other than schools handle their research.

Investment in Research Infrastructure (OMB A21, Direct & Indirect Costs)
Marvin Parnes followed up on last month's RPC discussion of investment in research infrastructure. At the last Research Associate Deans (RADs) meeting the same topic was introduced in preparation for the January RADs meeting at which individual RADs will present information on research infrastructure investment in their units. Some are expected to talk specifically about indirect cost recovery. RPC members are invited to the January 22 RADs meeting to participate in the discussion.

Mpathways
Regarding MPathways implementation, Marvin Parnes said the many concerns of the research community about how it works are recognized. He said a memo will be going to the research community to reassure that the problems with MPathways are not being ignored. The procurement area has experienced the most trouble, Parnes said.

Post-Year of the Humanities and the Arts (YoHA) Initiatives
Julie Ellison distributed to RPC the "What was YoHA?" report which will also soon go to the Regents. She told RPC about programs which were "spun off" from YoHA and which are taking on successful lives of their own. She said the Arts of Citizenship Program, directed by David Scobey, is really getting off the ground quickly. The objective of this program is to facilitate collaborative work between the University, the community, and public partners on local, regional, and national levels. Examples are the Students on Site program where collaborations with two Ann Arbor schools focus on the history of the greater Broadway bridges area of Ann Arbor. This involves research by faculty and community members as young as second-graders. David Scobey has also been asked by the City of Ann Arbor to work with those planning for the construction of the new Broadway bridges and park. Another spin off from YoHA, Town Gown 2000 (also known as TG2K), is a national higher education initiative involving the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the White House Millenium Project. TG2K will kick-off in March.

Research Administrator Training
Judy Nowack told of the progress on development of the research administrator training program. She said there is now a clear idea of what the program will look like once it is underway. Staff from OVPR and DRDA, in addition to other experienced research administrators from across the University, have developed a framework of a program to teach key department or lab personnel around campus what needs to be known in order to be a top-notch research administrator. She said UM is a national leader in this effort and other institutions are looking to us as a model. A multitude of administrative support areas relating to research and regulatory compliance will be covered. Nowack said this program is an attempt to foster a distributed system with administrators on site in departments and labs who can answer questions and thereby take some burden off of faculty. The program will be tailored to meet the needs of specific departments where possible. Marvin Parnes said the aim is to create a very professional type of program and to make it as durable as possible. In a related vein, Fred Neidhardt suggested that RPC be apprised of what efforts Judy Nowack, Marvin Parnes, and others are engaged in to resist superfluous government and agency burdens, and to diminish the impact of existing burdens on researchers.

Wiesner Symposium
Lee Katterman stated that plans are well underway for the third Wiesner Symposium which will be on March 29, 1999.

Updates from the Chair
Farewell and Thank You to Fred Neidhardt Ben van der Pluijm expressed RPC members' collective appreciation for Fred Neidhardt's thoughtful leadership of research at the University, and also for contributing to the ongoing strength of the relationship between RPC and OVPR.

Life Sciences Initiative
Guest: Gary Krenz, Special Counsel to the President and staff to the Life Sciences Commission
Ben van der Pluijm said RPC has had several conversations regarding the Life Sciences Commission (LSC), and in talking with Gary Krenz the group hopes to learn more about the goals and objectives of the LSC. Krenz relayed that the LSC co-chairs Huda Akil and William Roush appreciate RPC's input on this initiative. Krenz described the process of establishing the LSC and its charge. The LSC was appointed in May 1998 by Lee Bollinger, Nancy Cantor and Gil Omenn. The LSC has been meeting on average on a weekly basis since the beginning of June. The Commission was charged with thinking very broadly about how to improve life sciences on campus. Further refinement of the charge came in meetings with Cantor and Omenn, who stressed that it was imperative for the Commission, first, to be bold, and second, to ensure that recommendations made deal with building bridges between and among units on campus.

Gary Krenz said that in response to Huda Akil's and Bill Roush's e-mail to faculty in the early fall there were about 150 substantive responses from a broad range of disciplines. He said there was at least one response from every college and many from the Medical School, Engineering, and LSA departments such as Biology, Chemistry, and Psychology. Input has also been solicited from outside the University. Distinguished life scientists from outside of the University met with the Commission to discuss future directions for the life sciences and to share their views on how to structure successful initiatives. To explore the creation of an institute as an approach for the initiative, the Commission met with David Featherman, Director of ISR, and Max Wicha, Director of the Cancer Center, on what has contributed to the success of their respective institutes. Krenz said that after looking at the data in aggregate the LSC has gained a picture of the life sciences at UM which shows it to be good overall and truly excellent in some limited areas, with significant room for improvement and sufficient strength that can be built upon. He said the time frame for advancement that the Commission is working with is 10-20 years.

Gary Krenz said there are two general kinds of issues being addressed by the LSC:
1) Programmatic issues. What are those intellectual issues into which we should put resources? The aim here is to look at peak life science areas that can be enhanced, that have potential significant impact on other disciplines, and that have potential significant educational impact, and then to build bridges between them. After targeting these areas, the question is what mechanisms to establish in order to accomplish the goals.

2) Systemic difficulties. What are institution-wide difficulties that affect life science fields? In particular, which of these difficulties may have an effect on the areas targeted above? Krenz said that systemic difficulties were cited in much of the faculty email received in response to Akil's and Roush's inquiry. Krenz said the LSC has considered the four systemic concerns below with regard to their impact on the life sciences programmatic issues, but it is also recognized that these four concerns go beyond just the life science fields:

a. Reducing barriers to interdisciplinary activities;
b. Recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty;
c. Ensuring that the core research facilities are sustained, and ensuring consistency through changes in leadership; and
d. Protecting faculty research time.

Regarding the life span of the LSC, the initial charge was to finish work by November 1, 1998. The Commission is now encouraged to try to complete its work, which will culminate in a report, by early winter term.

Ben van der Pluijm said the concern of RPC members has been that the LSC is focused on just the health sciences instead of taking a broader view of all the fields that really make up the life sciences. He commented that there has been hearsay that the physical sciences are also included in the LSC's focus. Krenz said the original charge to the LSC did not limit the focus to the health sciences, but was much broader, and that bridging life sciences across the entire campus has been an expressed goal. He acknowledged, however, that some on campus had perceived the Commission as being focused on health sciences, and said that the commission is aware of this perception. He noted that Nancy Cantor, Lee Bollinger and Gil Omenn, encouraged the Commission to focus on the areas best known to the members, and so the focus of the LSC is to a degree a reflection of the composition of the committee- which includes a substantial number of individuals in the health sciences, but also includes numerous faculty from fields outside of the health sciences. Krenz emphasized that the focus of the LSC and its report will not be the health sciences per se but fundamental life science areas that cut across the health sciences and other fields.

Marvin Parnes said that an initiative such as this can have the appearance of trying to define what is important scholarship and what is not. People in other disciplines might be afraid that they are being left out or diminished and wonder why there is not a commission for their discipline. He recommended that this concern somehow be addressed in the framing of the LSC's work. Fawwaz Ulaby said Nancy Cantor has expressed that this commission will serve as a model for future ones in various disciplines. Van der Pluijm said the work of the LSC may put a particular stamp on the University's image and thus make it difficult to attract individuals in other areas. Krenz said the LSC is very aware of this issue, and though it is not in the Commission's purview to address this directly, hopefully aspects of the report will help mitigate this perception. Enhancement of life science must not be achieved at the expense of other University strengths.

Julie Ellison, citing David Hollinger's article, said that as a research institution UM has maintained a strong national reputation for "generic" excellence, that is, excellence in everything, the cost of this being lack of a national reputation in one specific field. She asked whether the work of the LSC signals a shift in the University's strategy toward being more specialized and toward a hierarchy of disciplines. Teshome Wagaw asked why the life sciences were chosen for such attention at this time. Fred Neidhardt said one reason may be that in the life sciences recently there have been breakthrough developments of a conceptual and methodological nature which have researchers poised to solve major problems, and so there is a sense that major things could happen in this area given the proper resources.

Joseph Rahme asked why there is no representation on the LSC from social science or humanities fields such as anthropology or philosophy. Krenz noted that there is one representative from Psychology on the Commission. He also said that the LSC would like to create a structure that will help create openings for interactions between the targeted areas and other disciplines. Fred Neidhardt noted that for the current Commission to look at the social sciences and humanities would have been too much to handle at once. Neidhardt said, however, the value of new discoveries in such fields as philosophy, history, and art should be brought to the foreground in near future. Neidhardt said next steps should include parallel examinations of the challenges and opportunities for other disciplines at the University including the social sciences and the humanities. Richard Ford suggested there be public discussion after the report is released of how the recommendations made will impact other areas.

Ben van der Pluijm asked what form the comments from RPC to the LSC should take from this point onward. Krenz said the thoughts of RPC will continue to be very helpful, and he said written input could be sent as a group or individually and could be focused either on the meta-issues or those asked about in the previous email. He said the LSC is open to input until their work is finished. Krenz said he will convey his sense of this discussion with RPC to the LSC co-chairs and to the President. It was stated that OVPR can also relay responses received from the research community. Van der Pluijm said he would summarize today's comments and send this to the LSC, and he also encouraged individual RPC members to send their ideas to the Commission.

Return to Faculty Governance Home Page

Return to Research Policies Committee Minutes Index