ad hoc Faculty Senate Committee
to Improve UAA’s Research Culture for December and January, 2004
The members of the committee include: Sharon Araji (Sociology)*, Jeff Bailey (Education), Grant Baker (Engineering), Robert Boeckmann (Psychology)*; Lauren Bruce (CAFÉ),*Alpana Desai (Computer Information Systems)*, Herminia Din (Art)*, Ron Everett (Justice)*, David Freistroffer (Chemistry)*, Tim Hinterberger (Biomedical Program)*, Mari Ippolito (Psychology)*, Jill Jahnke (Nursing), Judith Moore (English), David Pfeiffer (Biology), Kat Tomka (Art)
The committee met on December 3, 2004. (Members whose names are starred were present at the most recent meeting.)
Sharon Araji reported on behalf of her subcommittee on conference travel funding policies across schools and colleges. At present, there are no known written policies at UAA. The School of Nursing awards $500 per year through their Faculty Awards Committee. Almost all faculty members (both tripartite and bipartite) have access to these funds and receive the funding if they apply. The amount of money budgeted for this is unknown. Nursing faculty can also dedicate a portion of their overload paid for travel funding and are encouraged to seek external funding to defer their travel expenses. College of Education travel funding is distributed through their various departments. The effort in COE is to make funding available to all applicants who wish to travel to conferences but the requests often exceed the funds available.
There was a discussion of policies at other universities as to funding for travel to conferences. Generally, the College of Arts and Sciences was rated as providing the fewest opportunities for input from Department Chairs and faculty members as to the distribution of available travel funds. For example, the University of Colorado at Boulder allocates up to $500 to faculty researchers to defer travel expenses but faculty can then devote this money to any legitimate portion of their conference expenses (e.g., airline tickets, registration, hotel costs). This flexibility then permits their faculty members to take advantage of external grants that are sometimes available to fund transportation costs only.
Robert Boeckmann reported on materials provided by Jeff Bailey. (Dr. Bailey formerly directed faculty research at universities in Austalia). Australia formerly had a two-tier system approximately equivalent to four-year community colleges and universities. They did away with the two-tier system, which resulted in a change in expectations, particularly as to faculty research productivity, at some of the community/technical colleges. This change in the research requirements for faculty was codified as a point system, which Dr. Boeckmann detailed. There was a discussion of the models explaining faculty research participation (i.e., a social exchange model in which faculty feel supported in their research pursuits and engage in research as part of being good citizens of the university and a model in which research is assumed to be an imperative of some academic fields such that university policies as well as the activities of seasoned faculty make it clear that research productivity is expected.) As to the latter, failure to be a productive researcher is responded to by the university via such responses as failure to grant tenure or promotions or award merit raises or bonuses. It was also pointed out that, in some cases, faculty research productivity is concomitantly motivated by personal values (i.e., an intrinsic interest in and belief in the value of the research process) which drive research productivity absent a social contract or adequate supportive, formative, or punitive measures.
Dr. Boeckmann also reported on the subsequent research done at the Australian universities. The survey they distributed to faculty did not find a relation between faculty perception of research support (the social contract model) and faculty engagement in research. Support here is defined as rewards such as raises and promotions rather than research infrastructure such as funding of conference travel and the purchase of necessary equipment. In addition, the stringent change in university policies in Australia meant that non-productive researchers were unlikely to remain in the employ of their universities.) Thus, this survey did not examine the role of university-provided infrastructure and research funding on faculty perceptions of their research obligations; this survey also did not request faculty to provide input as to which university practices improve faculty research effectiveness.
There was a general discussion of the need for research infrastructure, including faculty development, at UAA. Lauren Bruce is working in collaboration with the Office of Sponsored Programs (Susan Browne) and Budget and Finance (Karol Weatherby) to provide faculty development opportunities in grant finding, writing, and administration. The first researchgrant-writing seminar will begin January 14 and announcement providing details will be distributed shortly.
Dr. Bruce is also working with the Council of Sponsored Research to institute First Thursdays: Thursday evening presentations by experts in selected research areas followed by Friday workshops for faculty researchers with an interest in developing collaborations to pursue related research.
The balance of the meeting was devoted to discussing the construction of a faculty survey to be distributed at UAA. Mari Ippolito distributed proposed survey items based on input from committee members. The subcommittee constructing the survey committed to work toward integrating this proposed survey with the survey provided by Jeff Bailey.
The next committee meeting is in the process of being scheduled.
Prepared by: Mari Ippolito / 1-07-05