STRATEGIC PLAN FOR RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT
BOULDER
April 2001
In March of 2001 the position of the Vice Chancellor for Research was established to
provide a focus for optimization of the campus research mission. This Strategic Plan is
written to guide the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the campus in
fulfillment of this mission, chiefly by processes to anticipate and meet issues, rather than
reacting to them as they arise. It is intended that this Plan shall be fully consistent with
the recent Strategic Vision document from the College of Engineering and Applied
Science, with the Strategic Plan of the College of Arts and Sciences, with the Report of
the 2000 Research/Creative Work Task Force, and with other recent campus and national
plans and reports.
I External Resources
The campus research enterprise is built upon the basic curiosity, passion and creativity
inherent in our faculty and students. We have thrived in the current system of proposaldriven, peer-reviewed federal research support. We rank 11th (as a University) in federal
research expenditures among all universities, public and private, in the most recent
compilation, and we have the second highest national level of federal support per faculty
member. We have reached a truly outstanding position as a research university.
The Boulder research enterprise has shown steady increases in research dollars, averaging
9% per year over the past decade, to $214M in our FY00-01. About 90% of our external
research support comes directly or indirectly from federal sources, but shows little
dependence on overall federal funding patterns over many years. There is an indication
in the rate of increase that a leveling off of funds to UCB may be anticipated, perhaps due
to a saturation of our ability to grow further. Our faculty has shown a 51% success rate
for their proposals, and about 1700 proposals per year have been submitted for the last
nine years. Over 37% of campus funding comes from research dollars, making us more
dependent upon the health of our research enterprise than any other comparable public
university.
*The prime responsibility of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research is to sustain
our successes in federally supported research, which is the foundation of our excellence.
Federal funding of campus research is conditional upon full compliance with an array of
federal standards, for financial, ethical and regulatory issues. A single slip in compliance
could have devastating effects upon our research, and upon our reputation.
*The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research will expect the highest levels of
compliance with federal and other professional standards from our faculty, staff and
students, and will provide fully adequate means to support and implement those
standards.
The campus research enterprise directly affects our many customers- students,
colleagues, community, business and industry, in Colorado, the nation and the world.
Many of these external customers were once our students, postdocs, and faculty, since we
have been an excellent source of educated leadership for many years. Locally, we see
hundreds of millions of dollars in new venture capital drawn to Boulder County and the
immediate area, and Colorado is now drawing the fifth highest level of venture capital
funds in the nation, in spite of our small population base.
Relative to this high impact, it is disappointing to see that our level of industrial support
is strikingly low, averaging less than 4% of external funds. Our mechanisms for seeking
and using industrial support seem sound, including sponsored project agreements,
sponsorship of interdisciplinary centers, gifts and student support. Campus and System
leaderships encourage the use of entrepreneurial and innovative ways to broaden our
circle of partnerships to enhance industrial and other private support. The increasing role
of science and technology in the State should provide greater opportunities, as well as
greater needs, for partnerships with our research enterprise.
UCB has excellent local connections to important federal laboratories and agencies, with
longstanding partnerships with NIST for JILA and NOAA for CIRES, in particular.
These local federal laboratories are thriving, and provide a unique advantage to UCB.
There is a recent addition of high-speed fiber optic connections among these neighboring
institutions.
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The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research must expand its efforts to explore, set
up and exploit a wider range of partners in support of our campus research enterprise
seeking both financial support and collaborative research programs. Time must be
found for the Vice Chancellor for Research to initiate and lead these pursuits.
Our Institutes and Centers are major building blocks of our research excellence. 52% of
all campus external grants and contracts were won by the Institutes in 2000, and about
70% of external funds were won by Institutes and Centers together. This is evidence of
our ability to create, foster and manage focussed interdisciplinary groups and teams over
impressively long periods of stability. Successful Centers are also being formed in the
humanities and the social sciences, with less external support but in the same spirit of
teamwork and coherence. We seem to be national leaders in our abilities to make such a
system work.
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The Office must maintain the long-standing emphasis on the creation and support of
major interdisciplinary Institutes and Centers. The Vice Chancellor for Research will
continue to serve as the effective ‘Dean of the Institutes’, acting as their advocate and
patron.
External funding supports a large number of ‘soft money’ researchers on campus,
including postdoctoral researchers seeking to enhance their future careers. We are
currently unable even to count their numbers nor evaluate their roles. Several Institutes
have established regular systems of titles and assessments for their researchers of all
seniorities.
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The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research will design and install a new system
of titles for researchers outside regular faculty ranks. Our goal is to make the
postdoctoral research apprenticeship rewarding, productive and attractive, while
providing a measure of assessment, stability and progress for more mature research
staff.
We now have, or can easily provide, many campus programs that can be valuable for
enhancing the postdoctoral experience, to advance career goals and to make these young
people yet more valuable to the research community. Currently there are awkward
federal accounting requirements that preclude some postdocs from any significant effort
outside their laboratories, and we will need to find solutions to this problem.
* The Vice Chancellor for Research will identify a person to serve as the focal point as
we design a means to enhance the postdoctoral experience on the Boulder campus. As
funds can be found, we will create opportunities for professional development of our
postdocs, and oversee the creation of an appropriate postdoc organization.
II Internal Resources
Leadership, initiative, suitable facilities, and the infrastructure needed to support the UCB
research enterprise must come from campus sources, including ICR collected from
external agencies to support distributed costs for the support of research. The operative
sentence of the Executive Summary of the 2000 Research/Creative Works Task Force
Report states
“Thus, prompt and enduring attention must be paid by all components of the Boulder
campus community in order to assure continued health and vigor for the research
enterprise.” Elsewhere in this Report there are repeated warnings of the fragility of the
campus ability to sustain our current and expected levels of success.
The Office needs to expand its base of insight into campus strengths and frailties, in order
to prioritize and make more effective the use of scarce campus resources. Further, we
will need yet better means to communicate campus missions and constraints to the
faculty.
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The Vice Chancellor for Research will create a new Research Advisory Council of
current faculty, similar to the present Executive Advisory Council for the combined
Graduate School/Research Office. A draft of the charge for this body is attached as
Appendix A.
Many important research, scholarly and creative activities by our faculty are not able to
find external funding, but are fundamental for us as a University. It is the responsibility
of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research to provide the needed support, but
within a context of a competitive, peer-reviewed system of proposals to bodies of faculty
peers.
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The Office will sustain campus supported intellectual activities, including the Council
on Research and Creative Work and the Graduate Committee on the Arts and
Humanities, seeking growth in the funds distributed as appropriate to our steadily
rising stature as a university.
The Office has not been as vigilant as we should be in evaluating the results of our efforts
and expenditures, due to crimped resources and lack of personnel. Funds are dispersed
for cost-sharing on equipment purchases, for instance, with no accountability of
how that equipment is used effectively.
* The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research will design a system of assessments
and evaluations across the campus research enterprise, using advice from insightful
faculty and staff. We will identify the crucial issues and set up appropriate mechanisms
for better ongoing review of the critical portions of our efforts. In cooperation with the
Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs, we will create a thoughtful system for the
review and renewal of Centers.
III Future Resources
We must maintain the current high level of external funding for research to maintain and
enhance our overall excellence as a university. We have reached a high national ranking
among research universities, climbing each year in various listings. However, we must
aim for a future built more upon excellence than growth. Space is extremely limited, and
our student population is growing very slowly, allowing little growth in faculty numbers.
Our administrative and other infrastructure in support of research is highly stressed, and
at or near its limits. We must plan for a leveling, or less real growth, in constant value
federal dollars.
The saturated level of about 1700 proposals submitted each year is one sign of saturation.
We also know of too many leading researchers who are submitting ten or more proposals
each year. We would rather see these individuals in their laboratories, not writing.
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The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research will emphasize and guide the
formation of larger and more collaborative research proposals, replacing in part the
proliferation of individual investigator proposals that have been so productive for us.
This plan is consistent with the growing trend of federal agencies to fund larger and
longer-term efforts with high impact. Since the effort to write these larger proposals
will be too great for many otherwise willing faculty to undertake alone, we will
request a new position within the Office to provide high-level help for these
proposals, freeing up large amounts of faculty time. The Research Advisory Council
will be expected to provide important guidance for the choices to be made.
Since we foresee a more focussed future for much of our campus research effort, we must
identify some few major strategic themes to optimize our uses of campus and other
resources. A draft list of recent suggestions, with a draft list of criteria we might use to
make our choices, is included as Appendix B.
The Vice Chancellor for Research carries the responsibility to enable and enhance the
research, scholarly and creative goals of all our campus faculty. One feature we feel it
necessary to strengthen is our overall sense of being members of a community of
outstanding scholars in a university with high stature in the nation and the world.

The Graduate School/Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research will increase its
efforts to develop the scholarship of being a university, with more campus-wide
symposia, seminar series, visitors, and other intellectual events.
We have a truly splendid faculty, but do not sense the national regard they and our
campus should merit.
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We will amplify our efforts to win national awards for our strongest faculty in all
fields, and to seek endowments for appropriate named chairs of very high prestige,
emphasizing interdisciplinary fields. We will expand our efforts to place our faculty
on national boards, panels, and committees to provide a higher level of national
leadership.
We will seek salaries and titles for Graduate School/Vice Chancellor for Research
staff commensurate with the very high stature and responsibility the campus expects
and deserves of us.
In order to create a new generation of experienced campus leadership in research, we
will seek means to bring more faculty part-time ‘rotators’ into the office. We will
explore private funding to establish these opportunities
IV Methods and Needs
We do not anticipate any major enhancements or redistributions of campus funds to meet
the goals of this Strategic Plan, but one structural change is of overriding importance.
The Vice Chancellor for Research presently receives funds based upon a reactive system,
recognizing needs by costs of the year previous. The pool of funds available is largely
from ICR, with the rate computed again upon the basis of demonstrated history. These
practices work to create a significant time lag between funding and expenditures, which
are always in time and proportional to current research activity.

We urge the campus administration to allocate funds for support of the campus
research enterprise through the Vice Chancellor for Research proportional to annual
awards received, not to previous expenditures. We will always know in advance of
the costs we will encounter from the list of these awards. This is the most effective
means to index budgets to needs, in advance of those needs.
Two small enhancements of our present budget are needed to meet the goals described
above.
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The campus needs to establish a system, best through the Vice Chancellor for
Research , for quick response to requests for small to medium costs for laboratory
renovations, for instance to accommodate new programs.
We need a system of ‘corporate bait’, whereby the Vice Chancellor for Research and
the faculty can take the initiative in establishing new partnerships with industry, by
having something to offer up front.
Personnel within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research itself are heroic in
meeting the burdens associated with increases in research activities. One means to
increase our staffing level is to bring in more external funds ourselves.

The Vice Chancellor for Research will seek an enhanced role as the Principal
Investigator on appropriate external grants and contracts, using the DA-ICR from
these actions to provide more general office support.
Fulfillment of some of the plans listed above will require new financial and staffing
resources, but not beyond recent budget requests. Successful application of this Strategic
Plan can be expected to strengthen the Boulder research enterprise and all that it supports,
but this application is conditional upon buy-in from the campus community, and
continuing timely and adequate allocations of resources.