CFUN Meeting Minutes
3-13-12
Present:
David Ryfe, David Zeh, Janita Jobe, Kelly Corrigan, Chris Coake, Ana Bettencourt-Dias, Patty Charles,
Steve Maples, Gary Blomquist, Trudy Larson.
Research and University Budgets:
Ryfe has been thinking about this for a long time and so he has some inside knowledge and will walk the
committee through it, as it was important for the commission to understand.
Total Grants and Contract: research, public service, instructional and scholarships were $110 million in
2010. COS, SOM, and EN were the top units in bringing in grant dollars. 55% of grant dollars came from
those 3 units. The majority of grant funding comes from research and the public service (some of which
acted as a pass through account).
David Ryfe reiterated that research is good.
Most of the research money goes to research, pays for PI, tools, grad research, and was restricted for that
purpose, and not very useful for the university other than the funding itself. If it was a federal grant, then the
ICR (indirect cost recovery) or F & A (Facilities and Administration money) is 41% ICR. Out of all research,
$13 million comes from research grants, public service does not normally bring in ICR, the total ICR is $16
million. This is relatively unrestricted and each college, department, president’s division, provost’s division,
alumni and development, and the Private Investigator all get a percentage. Many percentages are devoted
to particular units based on pre-approved rates. Gary said the money is used to enhance research.
The Research and Grants Task Force and Committees have said the same thing, if we sink more of the F
& A into research, then it would be a self generating proposal. This would create some bridge funding and
a pool of funds for start-up money for new research faculty.
Of the $110 million in grants, they produced $16 million ICR, which means that for every $6.8 million the
university would get $1 million in ICR. If research was going to drive the university, we would need to
produce an additional $3 to $4 million in ICR each year so we would need to increase the grant awards by
$27 million.
Discussion:
We should not look at research as funding the university. Research brings in money to build buildings, hire
graduate students, help the community, and generates movement in the economy. Research pays for
salaries, tools and equipment. It also provides instructional money and it is difficult to separate. We have
scarce resources and will not be able to grow through state money.
Every university that dealt with fewer resources has gone through this and the model utilized was to grow
the university by getting control of tuition. The cycle was to raise the tuition and grow the student body, use
tuition increase money to grow the faculty, and then recruit better students, and repeat the process.
With the 8% increase, 42% of it went to 15 new faculty positions, now the choice was where to put those
faculty positions. The research structure must been seen through the infrastructure. Where do those new
faculty get placed? Would it be based on the FTE? The application process from departments included 4
points that would be considered for the positions. Including FTE, graduation rates and where else this
position helps to fulfill future plans. It would be good to have the Provost share that information with the
commission.
Some universities have a biotech institute around them and while this is a long term plan for our university
what do we do now? Our administration will most likely use FTE to place faculty. When the applications for
new faculty were submitted to administration, deans needed to address the following things: FTE,
graduation rates, and how else this position fit into the future plans.
David questioned why we have to grow? We could get more efficient, and keep student size the same. We
spend more money per grad than other land grant institution. We could have larger classes and larger
classrooms, but then we lose a lot of experience that the students are looking for. If we find a different way
of teaching that many students, they might not lose the experience.
Our goals should not be to choose between units, we have been forced to do that over the last few years.
We need to figure out a way to integrate so it is not an either/or choice, we need to frame choices better
and provide new ways of thinking
We need to look at some kind of model for our university that does make some simplifications, but that are
also viable for us.
Discussion:
The academic culture needs to figure out a way so that research is not pitted against teaching. We need to
value excellence in the tenure process.
We could look at variable job descriptions; some that change yearly, one person does not have to do all the
research or teaching.
The tenure process is archaic and creates two tiers and animosity among faculty.
People who are not socialized into the tenure system do not really understand tenure, it is a culture. When
Ryfe was in graduate school, he was not taught to teach, but was taught that they were producers of
knowledge, preserve autonomy. It would not be easy to do away with the tenure process, as it is a culture
that will not easily go away. Tenure is a trial by fire process. The meaning of tenure has changed over the
years. Academic faculty have been relatively autonomous and the board was proposing to reduce the
amount of time they have to produce knowledge and do research. Now the focus is on graduating students.
We have a responsibility to be part of the changing process; we could attach research onto undergraduate
education. We need to conduct research because it will help to graduate more students, who will learn
more and their lives will be better by this research activity.
There are different models for integrating these two things.
Students:
Where will our new students come from? As we look at our growth trends, from 17,500 to 21,000 students
we need to find them from different areas. We already get 90% of Washoe County students and 40% of
Clark County students. If the freshman class size increases to 4,500 students, we would need to look
outside of Nevada for about 1,500 students.
It costs the university about $12,000 to produce one FTE. Our in-state tuition is $6,000, WUE students
bring in about $9,000 and out-of-state students $18,000. The question is what we can do to bring those
students to our campus? What makes us different besides being affordable? Students are looking for nice
facilities, a gym, athletics, etc. We need to organize ourselves to that the best advantage to create and
experience that is unique.
Homework for the group:
To come up with three solutions of how to bring new students to campus: what would they propose, what
was the value added proposition?
Identify data points and peer institutions.
Next time we will talk about retention and graduation rates. David will talk to Shannon Ellis about attending
a meeting too.