UH has motive, opportunity and means to become a flagship university, chemical engineering professor Richard Willson said at Wednesday’s town hall meeting for National Competitiveness and Tier I.
The town hall meetings are a forum for faculty, staff and students to review draft proposals and offer input on the future of the University.
‘Every mystery novel tells us the three factors essential to making things happen: motive, opportunity and means,’ Willson said. ‘Becoming Tier I is no different.’
Willson laid out steps the University can take to achieve its goals, each requiring completion of a series of objectives.
The first step is to create and enhance faculty incentives for increased research productivity, Willson said. To do so, UH will need to increase the number of endowed chairs, establish benchmarks for teaching, research and service and develop policies to support research productivity.
‘Tier I is based on external research funding, and UH needs to improve in this area,’ he said.
UH will also need to create a culture that expects and supports faculty participation in externally- sponsored research.
It can do this by ensuring that everyone, from President Renu Khator to the department chairs, expects UH to become Tier I, Willson said. Research performance should guide college, department and individual resource allocations and increase the number of research recognition events.
‘Administration is serious about becoming a flagship university,’ he said. ‘We will spend over $100 million to reach this goal.’
UH plans to strengthen infrastructure by improving the work environment with competitive salaries, more networking opportunities, improved child care, improved IT and by providing editorial and review assistance to faculty.
‘Productivity goes down when researchers are worried about their children,’ Willson said. ‘For some of our researchers, English is not their first language, so having an internal review board is more efficient than outsourcing.’
A concern was raised at the meeting that the University’s drive toward flagship status may be to the detriment of some of its research laboratories that have consistently produced research result.
Willson said the University plans to expand the scope of the UH research enterprise by increasing participation in multi-institutional research centers and create UH-based national research centers, making UH a destination for research conferences and visitors and enhance UH technology transfer, licensing and spin-off activities.
‘UH needs a wonder – something that we can market,’ Willson said. ‘This will strengthen our center playing.’
This is where the clusters come in. They put people together for more exciting research and development, Willson said. UH needs cores to do research.
‘Some clusters are doing well, and some need to be built up,’ Willson said.
The town hall meetings continue from 10:30 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. today in the New Orleans Room, University Hilton. They will address goals of student success and resource competitiveness, respectively.
UH holds its final town hall meeting from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Monday in the San Francisco Room, University Hilton, where it will address University local and worldwide recognition.
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