The University of New Mexico has experienced a rapid increase in research funding over the last ten years. This has led to an increased national awareness of this university as a research institution with major strengths in a variety of areas and its classification as a Doctoral/Research University-Extensive. This has been a remarkable achievement that indicates not only the quality of the faculty but also the support of the administration at all levels. Yet, in spite of the many successes, there are a number of problems within the university structure that may inhibit future growth and the ability of the university community to establish strong interdisciplinary groups that are necessary to identify and address large multidisciplinary problems.
The academic side of the university has also undergone significant changes
in the same time frame. The emergence of new disciplines in the academic
community has led to the creation of new departments and degree programs
within this university. It has also led to changes, some significant,
in the emphasis of individual departments and modifications of degree requirements
to reflect the changing needs of the discipline. There have been
additional courses created in response to the changing interests of the
faculty and students. The majority of these changes have been due to the
initiative of small groups of faculty or individual departments.
This committee believes that the university can become a leader in
establishing nation-wide trends, rather than merely following trends which
emerge from time to time. Proximity to prominent national laboratories
with strong interdisciplinary research programs, the Santa Fe Institute,
industries, museums, and internationally recognized performing arts centers
provides the university with unique opportunities to develop niches in
interdisciplinary activities. There are numerous intellectual challenges
and problems which can bring together different disciplines. The university
can become a leader by building partnerships on campus as well as off-campus.
There are already substantial funding opportunities for research and teaching
in interdisciplinary activities, and given the trends, there are likely
to be more opportunities that emphasize partnerships and collaborations
across disciplines.
In order to reach this position of leadership, it is necessary to first bring the university to a level that is comparable to its peers and to then surpass them. It is the feeling of this committee that this can be done over a period of time with only a moderate increase in funding from the state, although it will ultimately require an aggressive development effort and possible restructuring.
The committee has identified three important conditions: increased communication between faculty across the campus so that new ideas can be identified and developed, the ability and willingness of the administration to recognize and support new initiatives, and the availability of the resources necessary to implement and sustain the program. In the above, resources are interpreted to mean not only funds but also space, staff, faculty and other appropriate infrastructure. These can be translated into the following broad objectives: (i) promoting interdisciplinary activities in teaching and research, (ii) mechanisms for developing and promoting new initiatives, and (iii) availability of necessary resources. Decisions as to whether or not to implement a new research or academic program will have to made on the basis of cost, potential benefits and impact on the local, national and international scene.
I. PROMOTING INTERDISCIPLINARY ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH:
As a first step, it is necessary to bring together groups who are likely
to play a pivotal role in developing interdisciplinary academic and research
programs. This requires input from all levels of the university structure
but puts a particularly heavy burden on the upper administration since
it they who will ultimately need to take the lead in defining, influencing
and predicting trends. Furthermore they must retain the flexibility and
courage to reorient/change when proven wrong.
Faculty, units/departments, and centers are actively seeking collaborations.
In addition, many of these units are doing research in related areas that
could be combined into larger collaborative units which would expand the
horizons of the individual groups. Yet, it is often true that individual
groups are unaware of related interests in different units. In order
to identify and encourage the formation of these potential collaborations,
we suggest that the university sponsor a series of Renaissance Workshops
that would bring together faculty with the expressed purpose of learning
about research and other scholarly activities in different areas and discussing
the establishment of collaborative projects.
It is this committee's thesis that the academic structure of the University of New Mexico needs to be thoroughly evaluated. The division of a university into academic departments is based upon definitions of disciplines that have blurred with time. In addition, many of the new areas that have evolved not only are a discipline unto themselves, but strongly impact the knowledge base that is required in the more traditional disciplines. A prime example is the phenomenal impact of computing and computer science on all disciplines. Today's research and scholarly activity as well as the knowledge base required of students to successfully compete in the marketplace draws upon a variety of disciplines--both new and traditional.
The current distribution of academic disciplines amongst the schools and colleges does not effectively support a number of interdisciplinary programs that either exists or could be created. While not significantly hindering the establishment of relatively small interdisciplinary research programs, it does make the establishment and operation of interdisciplinary academic programs and large research programs difficult.
The administrative and geographical separation of the Health Sciences Center (HSC) from the rest of the university creates unnecessary barriers between the two campuses. Even though the HSC is a nearly autonomous unit with a separate research administration and academic departments, many potential areas of research collaboration and of interdisciplinary academic programs exist between units on the main campus and the HSC. These are difficult to identify because there is no central authority that is aware of what is going on in both units. Furthermore, once a collaborative project is identified it is difficult to implement because of the differences in operating procedures and the necessity of negotiating the distribution of spoils and support services. The HSC’s charge to provide optimal health care to all New Mexicans requires a commitment to human health research that reaches beyond the confines of North Campus and encompasses disciplines ranging form physics and engineering to sociology, art, business and law. It is absolutely essential that procedures/mechanisms be implemented for closer collaboration with the research administrations on the main campus and HSC.
In order to encourage the greatest amount of communication between different academic disciplines, increase efficiency of operation, and encourage the development of interdisciplinary programs-research and academic-the committee feels that a reorganization/restructuring should be investigated and if viable, implemented.
Although we feel that restructuring would have the biggest impact on
the development of interdisciplinary programs and research.
We also realize that this would take a long time to develop a reasonable
plan and implement it. The committee has therefore included a number
of recommendations that could be implemented in the immediate future.
1. Reorganize the University to reflect and encourage collaborative research and teaching missions.II. DISTRIBUTION OF OVERHEAD
The current College/Professional School-based structure is anachronistic. It may have served us well in past but it does not mesh with the pressure for cross-disciplinary, cross-professional, or even across Lomas collaborations. There are nascent shifts in many critical arenas--for Biomedical and Bioengineering projects, for realignments among Physics, Math, and Computer Science, for innovative initiatives between the Fine Arts and Sciences, for interdisciplinary offerings that bridge the Social Sciences, Planning, and Law, etc. Research and teaching in future could be improved by reorganizing the academic units into broader-based clusters. While it is the purview of the faculty to determine the best possible re-groupings, some possibilities for discussion include clustering relevant units from within engineering and the hard sciences/math together, or the humanities with fine arts, or the social sciences and community and regional planning. The planning task is to develop a mechanism for identifying the most appropriate possibilities and involving key faculty and administrators in developing realistic scenarios for reorganization that are sensitive to the governance and budgetary issues involved. The committee recommends that the Provost, Vice President for Research, and Vice President for Health Sciences convene a series of discussions across campus with the charge to look at how reorganization of the college structure could proceed. Key to the effort will be the joint participation of the Deans, department heads with strong interests in developing collaborations, and our most creative and interdisciplinary faculty--many of whom already engage in on-going struggles to implement interdisciplinary programs in a structure which does not encourage such initiative.
We also feel that this restructuring could include some of the existing centers in the clusters and thereby eliminate some of the tensions that currently exist between departments and other academic units.2. Role of Centers and Programs in promoting interdisciplinary activities.
The must successful units for enhancing interdisciplinary research are the Class I Centers. Yet, even though they provide research opportunities for undergraduates and strongly support graduate student education through dissertation opportunities, their impact on or leadership in developing interdisciplinary academic programs is minimal.
Another unit that has been created to enhance interdisciplinary studies is programs. They provide both a nucleation point for faculty with similar interests that do not conveniently fit into any one department and, at the same time, provide programs of study for students that cross traditional department boundaries. Although they provide the courses and programs of studies that are not inherent in the centers, they do not provide the same concentrated research focus of the centers.
In both of these units, there are tensions between them and the departments from which participating faculty are drawn. The active participation of a faculty member in a center or program invariably decreases the amount of time that he or she devotes to department activities and often hinders the department’s attempts to build its own programs. In return, the home department can significantly hamper or aid these units through performance reviews of the faculty and directors and through hiring practices. In addition, the centers are restricted in the directions that they can grow and are vulnerable to loosing expertise in key areas because departments hold faculty slots and, therefore, determine areas in which they will hire.
Faculty participation in centers and programs should be seen as contributing towards strengthening of the research programs of all units while minimizing the impact on the department’s obligations. Clear guidelines should be established to cover evaluation of faculty in centers and other autonomous programs, as well as the rights of home departments. Furthermore, consideration should be given to assigning part- or full-time faculty slots to centers and academic programs that could be used to strengthen their activities and allow them to evolve while maintaining their ties to academic departments. We envision that these faculty would belong to some department/cluster and therefore have teaching responsibilities in that unit. Furthermore, promotion and tenure would be determined by both units.
Perhaps a more crucial set of questions is the conditions under which a center or program should be created and then once created how it should be administered, evaluated and supported. This committee believes that, in the case of Class I Centers, their operations need to be closely monitored for the first several years of operation to insure that they will not only be successful but will also be sustainable. We also be believe that a proposal to create a center needs to be carefully reviewed by the upper level administration, the Council of Deans and a select committee of faculty members before it is implemented. We also believe that Class I Centers should have an internal steering committee consisting of faculty and chairs of the departments whose faculty are involved with the center that will act as an advisory committee to the director of the center. The Council of Deans should retain some oversight of centers that impact the departments in their units.3. Administrative infrastructure
Evolving administrative mechanisms which not only facilitate collaborative research across departments, colleges, and campuses (main and health sciences), but also promote them, is critical. The Vice Provost for Research should play a leading and active role in this endeavor. Even in the case of a major restructuring, responsibility for developing and nurturing interdisciplinary research programs must reside with the Vice Provost for Research.
The university needs to develop procedures for handling large projects that require involvement of several branches of the university administration and interfaces with outside agencies. This includes careful review of these proposals before they are submitted to determine the commitment necessary from the university administration that will insure successful completion of the project if it is funded.
The university should implement business procedures that streamlines purchasing and accounting, reduces costs and increases efficiency. This includes standardizing procedures across all units, particularly between the main campus and HSC. This will reduce the difficulties and overhead currently present in creating and running a large interdisciplinary program by reducing the number of staff necessary to operate the program.4. Reward structure to support interdisciplinary studies
As noted above, the lines that once divided disciplines have, in many cases, become blurred. This state of affairs indicates that the development of more flexible degree plans at all levels ought to occur and there should be a surge of interdisciplinary research. There are several reasons why this has not happened. Perhaps the most obvious is the inherent trait of faculty to defend their own turf. In most cases, this boils down to defending ones own research area first and then the department. Another problem is that it is not clear to anyone how to go about identifying and creating these programs. Finally, it is a lot of work with no clear-cut reward structure.
There are a number of collaborations that cross departmental and even college lines. These are invariably initiated by several faculty members from different departments and are usually restricted to a relatively small scale. There are many reasons for this, several of which are: reluctance of the participating departments to commit resources to projects that appear to be outside their discipline, lack of availability of funds from the upper administration, limited goals of the collaborators, and administrative problems with creating and maintaining new units. These reasons come into full play if an attempt is made to create a cross-disciplinary academic program. Even if a department or departments decided that a radical shift in their current emphasis was warranted, it is unlikely that there would be sufficient resources or faculty slots available to make such a change viable.
There have to be clearly defined reward structures to encourage the development of interdisciplinary academic programs and large scale multidisciplinary research programs. These could include faculty slots that can only be used for initiating or sustaining programs that involve two more units, enhanced overhead return for a limited time and additional funds to seed new programs. There must also be rewards for the faculty members involved and/or the process streamlined sufficiently to incline the faculty members to embark on such a project. Faculty rewards could include release time from departmental duties and enhanced overhead return.
A significant fraction of the overhead generated is returned to the
colleges, schools and departments. These funds are often used to
cover operating expenses of the department and college, which would normally
be covered under the I&G budget, and also to cover start-up costs for
new hires, to provide matching funds and to fund new initiatives.
Although these funds may allow departments with a substantial overhead
return to fund new initiatives, it is often used to cover the operating
costs of the department, college or school. Even if this were not
the case, the bottom line would be that much of the initiative for establishing
new directions for research and new academic programs would be left to
the departments and colleges or schools that generate the most overhead
return. Furthermore, the current method of dispersing these funds penalizes
those departments and schools or colleges that are in areas where there
is little chance for generating overhead return.
A plan needs to be developed whereby the upper administration retains
more funds that can be used for seeding new initiatives, startup funds,
etc. In order to do so, it will be necessary to review department,
college and school budgets to insure that they have sufficient funds to
operate and to continue with the initiatives that they have started with
overhead funds. It is important to keep in mind that the overhead
funds returned to the departments, schools and colleges are not only used
to cover operating costs and new initiatives but also to cover TA/GA salaries,
maintain and upgrade the infrastructure, enhance teaching and pay for new
teaching laboratory equipment, as well as providing matching funds for
new faculty. Retention of a larger amount of the overhead funds by
the upper administration will seriously hamper those departments that have
come to rely on this money to supplement their I&G budgets. Although
outside of the purview of this committee, we believe that the university
needs to aggressively pursue methods of streamlining business practices
that will induce a significant amount of savings through reduction of staff
and other expenses.