Meeting notes: March 21, 2014

Callie discussed the concept of investment in research to support interdisciplinary activity.  She has posted links on our site to benchmark institutions and welcomed contacts and referrals from the task force.

Callie met with the President’s Roundtable and asked three questions on behalf of the task force:

1. Why do students come to RIT?  What strengths draw them here?
2. What are our strategic opportunities for growth in the future?
3. What is the size and compostition should RIT aim for in its graduate programs?

She got the following feedback from the roundtable group:

• (All) research efforts should lead to commercializable activity. 
• RIT should think about our research in terms of areas of impact, including health care, environmental change, big data, advanced manufacturing.
• RIT should look at peers and identify specific indicators that enhance RIT’s brand.
• RIT should market its brand more aggressively outside Rochester and do more to publish the results of research and other successes.

Linda Underhill distributed a handout on results of a values questionnaire.  It was completed by 125 graduate students in fall 2013.  The survey showed that graduate students value an RIT education because faculty are engaged in research and scholarship. (These results are now posted on the wiki.)

Andre pointed out that our mission includes training and most of this is done through fundamental research.  We cannot be a great university and we cannot do great applied research without doing great fundamental research.

Hector invited two Ph.D. program directors to share their views.  Bruce S. wanted to know what degree of importance RIT will place on research based graduate programs and noted that the outcome of the strategic plan is very important in this regard.  Will RIT value these programs in a way that allows them to grow?  Bruce and other Ph.D. program directors want a clear signal about growing these programs.

Pengcheng observed that new faculty have increased expectations to do research, but do not have the right resources to be successful.  A critical mass of qualified students is necessary to support research faculty.  Last year, the need for computing doctoral students doubled (measured by faculty requests for graduate research assistants) but Pengcheng does not have the means to double the number of students.

Callie asked the group to divide in three discussion sections and address two questions:

• What is the process by which we can identify future areas of investment? 
• How can RIT catalyze these areas of investment?

Specific strategies from discussion groups:

1. Ensure any effort to identify strategic strengths considers faculty hiring, past and future.

2. Create an inclusive strategy, evaluate the right number of target strategic strengths, have something like MIT’s creative collaborations for those who do not fit neatly into target areas.

3.  Use available RIT data to understand those research and other activities that we do well, those that are nascent, and those that we aspire to, including RAPID and the Wallace scholarship database.

4.  Ensure resources for graduate education and research are identified in the strategic plan.

5.  Create an environment for innovation and creativity.

6. Investment in research is critical but we need a realistic plan for investment, not motherhood and apple pie.  The investment plan should have real numbers tied to RIT benefits.

7. More fundamentally, we must look at research as an investment in the long term, not a short term profit center.

Callie asked the group what we would need to understand to make realistic projections about investment.

• The cost of graduate education, especially Ph.D. education, can’t be measured by tuition collected.  The marginal cost of adding a doctoral student is small, but the benefit is large.  Can we benchmark investment against an appropriate unit of value? 
• We need to appreciate that RIT is a startup company in terms of research, and startup companies can take a decade or more to make money.
• What are the right metrics to show the value of research?  How can we articulate this value in terms the Board of Trustees and President’s Roundtable can understand?
• What would a future RIT look like without research?  This might make a powerful story.

Next Steps

What does a creative, intellectually stimulating research environment look like?  Come back with one idea on how to build a research culture.