To:
See attendees below
From:
Shawn Banker
Copy:
Jan Nisbet
Subject:
UIC Advisory Board Meeting – Spring 2015
Date:
03-26-15
Attendees:
Shawn Banker
John Tsavalas
Sterling Tomellini
Rick Cote
Kevan Carpenter
Glenn Shwaery
Laurie Westover
Kelley Thomas
Kevin Gardner
On Monday, March 23, 2015 the first advisory board meeting for the University Instrumentation Center
was held. This memo serves as a record of the meeting and follows the agenda that was presented.
Thank you all for participating.
By-laws review:
The by-laws were provided earlier for review and the board discussed various sections in more detail.
Board Composition:
After discussing for a period, the board agreed that the current members were appropriate and it was
agreed that we would remove the requirement for a student member. Consideration for non-UNH
members was also discussed and the team agreed that is not required or appropriate for this board at
this time.
The board agreed to modify the board member descriptions to be more descriptive of the members in
that three would be from COLSA, three from CEPS, one at large member, one UIC Director and one
member of the OSVPR administration staff for a total of nine (9) members.
Terms:
The board agreed to the terms defined in the by-laws with the exceptions we would eliminate the 4 year
term limit but leave the option for extending the board member term annually.
Approval:
The board voted unanimously to approve the by-laws with the changes listed above. Shawn agreed to
update the by-laws and provide with notes from the meeting.
Business Review:
Prior to the board meeting, a packet was provided to the board outlining the current UIC metrics and
historical data on the UIC performance including the following:
Monthly performance metric data
Annual financial performance from 2009 to 2014 as well as 2015 YTD data
Annual UIC user data (faculty and staff) from 2009 to 2014 and 2015 YTD data
External billing and customer data from 2009 to 2014 and 2015 YTD data
Average monthly instrument usage data from 2009 to 2014 and 2015 YTD data
The board reviewed the reported information and offered the following suggestions/comments:
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Having a measure of the level of research enabled is important. Kevin suggested evaluating how
the UIC can utilize a new system (Elements) to assist in this process.
Supporting undergraduate education is important and current metrics do not measure this
directly.
There should be a measure of sustained usage rather than just number of users and hours used.
Current measures include faculty and staff users which is important but there should be a
measure of the number of graduate and undergraduate students utilizing the UIC.
Looking at the age of the NMRs and the significant drop off of use over the years (40 and 55%),
it is important to find out why and what needs to be done to remedy this including perhaps new
instrument(s) or better understanding of current and future user requirements.
A key source for external customer development is through graduate and future graduates of
UNH (both under grad and grads).
It is important to understand what unique instruments the UIC has or should have as they relate
to others in the area, both academic and industrial.
A key source of recognition and promotion of the UIC can be through acknowledgement of
services provided within publications, URC project posters, and similar outlets. A
recommendation that the UIC develop a standard phrase to be used when acknowledging the
UIC in these materials was suggested.
Opportunities:
This section of the meeting was set aside for the board to provide suggestions, general and specific
feedback, and ideas to help the UIC provide a higher value added service to the university. To help
frame the discussion, the following topics were highlighted:
Current Instruments
Methods of promoting current instruments was discussed and some of the recommendations included:
 Recommendations to exploit social media including modifying the UIC website to generate hits
on google and other search engines were made.
 Connecting with various consortiums across the state and region to highlight what the UIC has
to offer was suggested.
 Engaging faculty through smaller user groups who can advise on opportunities for
instrumentation applications was encouraged.
 Offering method development and real application examples rather than simply access to
instruments by helping researchers understand possible applications of instruments was
suggested as a method to increase awareness and use of UIC instruments and services.
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Information on the Paul School senior class project, the hiring of UNH Innovations’ marketing
person who will help represent the UIC and other marketing efforts were discussed.
Engineering Services
Expansion of engineering services provided across campus was also discussed with feedback provided
on current services.
 Preventative maintenance (PM) of instruments was discussed as a great opportunity for the UIC
to expand its role. The example of refrigerated instrument service program that was started
was referenced as a positive change. Recommendations to develop a PM program for other
common instruments on campus with a “per instrument charge” was expressed as way to
expand this and provide funding to the UIC. The recommendation was to pick a top common
instrument that will benefit from PM and offer to faculty as a starting point.
 Calibrations of instruments was discussed and members of the board suggested that we have a
huge opportunity to expand this through promotion as many are not aware that the UIC
provides calibration services for the variety of instruments in use.
 Another suggestion was to offer discounted calibration services during off peak time for the UIC
so we can help manage the demand profile.
Other Services
The board discussed the idea of taking on analytical testing services such as the fatty acid testing (one
example) being done externally when an instrument exists on campus but is not staffed.
 The UIC should explore these opportunities but ensure they are in alignment with the UIC
mission and can be done cost effectively.
Staff/Expertise
The board discussed the UIC staff in general.
 There are likely specific opportunities for the UIC staff to increase their effectiveness and
breadth of knowledge through focused training based on input from customers/researchers.
New Instruments
The board discussed the acquisition of new instruments on campus and the current MRI process and
opportunities to improve.
 Members agreed that the MRI process is in need of becoming more strategic and that this board
should take an active role to help determine which instruments should be proposed to support
the longer term goals of the university.
 A suggestion of changing the MRI process from a two spot annual competition to a one spot
competition with the other spot being filled by a board sanctioned instrument proposal.
 With much hiring within the colleges happening, it is important to work towards a road map for
the next several years on what instrumentation needs will be important. This board should be
able to help with this process and may require special meetings beyond the bi-annual meetings.
UNH Core Strategy
The board had a few minutes to discuss the subject of having a UNH core facility strategy on campus and
did not have time to fully engage in the discussion. Some comments/suggestions brought forward
included:
 It was suggested that a good place to start would be to understand what we have on campus at
this time for operations that might be considered cores or charge back centers.
 The benefit of having common systems and practices on campus was well received. Some of the
work the Genomic Center and the UIC are doing with laboratory management systems is a good
example.
 It was suggested this could be an agenda item for the next meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 2:32 pm with an agreement that the next meeting would be scheduled 6
months from now at least a month in advance. An agenda will be drafted.