Shoot the Laggards

Some days research at a PUI or MCU is sisyphean. I have received a series of e-mails from my home institution recently concerning research resources that the university will no longer support. The most recent is that solvents will no longer be provided. This was the last chemical support we had as the department cleared the storerooms of all chemicals not used in teaching labs already. The basic message is that if a faculty member is going to engage in research they must provide all their own resources. It presents an interesting problem since scholarly activity is a requirement of our contracts and students do pay a lab fee for research units.

I do recognize that RO1 faculty must provide all their own resources. The thing is that PUI and MCU faculty don't have the same ability to produce the kind of results that support the level of granting that RO1 faculty have access to. Also research is not our primary mission, so we need to serve our research programs as a secondary activity to teaching.

Ironically, as we are changing our Retention, Tenure, and Promotion requirements to increase research requirements we are eliminating support for research. A friend refers to this increasing scholarly activity by shooting the laggards.

You give some modest startup and tell the new faculty to get outside funding. If by the time the candidate reaches tenure evaluation they have gone through the startup and don't have outside support their program is dead, and so are they as far as tenure goes.

T.S. Hall