Last month, Binghamton University’s latest Strategic Plan, entitled “Excellence in a Climate of Change,” was presented with an emphasis on ensuring that the institution would adapt to changing trends in higher education. The plan stresses the importance of hiring more professors, and highlights the role professors have in funding research and developing BU’s reputation as a research university.

According to University Provost Mary Ann Swain, the entire University will be expected to be “more entrepreneurial,” and all members of staff are encouraged to think about how they can contribute to the Strategic Plan’s goals.

“The state is going to be challenged as any state is with how many resources they can give to higher education,” Swain said. “So we just need to be more creative about getting resources.”

HIRING SPREE

The Strategic Plan allots $1 million for hiring new professors in Fall 2006. The ratio of faculty to students is expected to improve to 1-20.

Swain also pointed out that although “there isn’t a department on campus that won’t tell you they don’t have enough faculty,” severely understaffed majors (like Africana studies) will hopefully be fullfilling their need for more professors.

“Faculty are primary in advancing academic excellence, so the institution wants to increase the number of faculty that we have in order to accomplish all the aspects of our mission,” Swain said.

SEEKING THE MONEY POT

In response to what she called a “national trend,” Swain said that the University will be encouraging professors to engage in collaborative research to get grant money from private and government funds.

“Nationally, funding is now more likely to go to clusters of [researchers] than to single individuals,” she said.

Swain said that individuals will be “mentored” so that “faculty whose research interests compliment each other enough that they could constitute a group could go after a particular pot of money.”

According to Stephen Gilje, associate vice president of research, collaborative research across disciplines is already taking place here. Larger grants from private funds usually require this kind of cooperative interaction, and as a result the University is now actively encouraging it.

CONCERNS OVER THE INITIATIVE: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DISCIPLINES

But the emphasis on large grants and interdisciplinary research raises concerns. There are those who forsee that the engineering- and science-related departments will benefit most from this initiative, and that grants from private industry will threaten the integrity of research.

Professor Bill Isbell of the anthropology department, who says he relies mostly on federal and private grants to fund his research, pointed out that the University takes a percentage of grant money as an overhead when the research is performed on campus.

According to Gilje, this overhead is called the Facility and Administrative Charge, and is usually about 50 percent of the grant money. He says that this is “on the low end” for most universities, and is “standard business operation” for research grants.

In Isbell’s opinion, this practice can lead to preferential treatment of certain departments, with those more likey to bring in large grants being favored.

In addition to the difference in funding between disciplines, concerns over the different departmental “cultures” lead to doubts of whether liberal arts and humanities professors will benefit from the Strategic Plan’s initiative as well as those in the engineering and science departments.

Swain acknowledged the differences between disciplines: “Science has much more of an interactive culture in how the work is actually done,” she said. “It’s not an issue of money and the rest of it, it’s about how they typically go about doing their scholarship. I’d say they have different challenges.”

CONCERNS OVER THE INITIATIVES: PRIVATE INDUSTRY FUNDING

The trend of seeking private research grants is a worrying one for professors who are apprehensive about the possible repercussions.

“There is push in many universities, including this one, to develop partnerships in industry,” Isbell said. “Social scientists feel ill-at-ease with that because we feel that universities should be free from non-academic influences.”

“Tentacles [of private industry] have reached further into university, generally under people’s radar, with surprisingly little controversy,” said Tom McDonough, a professor in the art history department.

The research department of the University emphasized that academics are not affected by outside influences and stresses policies that protect research with patents and the right to publish.

Gilje also pointed out that private companies can benefit students who assist with research by giving them the opportunity to get jobs.

“As long as we are able to retain our academic freedoms, it does not matter to me where the funding is coming from,” he said.