Draft Strategic Plan for Research is available for review and comment
August 23, 2010
This draft strategic plan is provided to give faculty an opportunity to give their input before it is finalized. Please provide your input by September 2nd, 2010 by commenting to this post anonymously and referring to page number and line number. On Sept. 7 the faculty committee and the VPR office will meet and consider any comments received in order to produce a final draft.
The following comments are from a variety of faculty in the School of Engineering and Mines. I am writing this in my role as Associate Dean for Research for the School.
Line 43 – I assume this is the mission statement for the office of research, however as worded, it reads like UND’s mission. I beleive that UND’s mission is much broader. Perhaps this can be reworded to state that “The mission of the Office of Research at the Univeristy of North Dakota focuses intensively …”
On lines 60-76 you talk about reesarch funding and F&A. It seems that industry, trade organizaiton, etc funding is left out. We need to focus a lot more attention on funding other than federal if we are to continue to grow and succeed as a resarch univeristy.
Lines 89 and 90 – we agree that federal dollars may be harder to obtain. That means we have to work harder, write more and better proposals, etc. We strongly feel that there should be a target set. The current wording gives fauclty an excuse not to write proposals and to accept a decline in proposal awards.
As a contiuation of goal setting – we feel that to have a viable plan that there must be action items and metrics attached to the plan. Without definative action items and targets, it is difficult to stretch and grow, but easy to shoot for easy to reach targets. This plan should challenge the university. Perhpas the action and metics are being worked on as the next level.
During the open forums that were held last spring, one of the major concerns was increased support to the faculty researchers. Lines 303 and 304 represent the only mention of support that will help faculty locate opportunities, prepare proposals and budgets, manage grants, etc. These are very time consuming and frustrating for many faculty and limit the number of grant applicaitns they write. Faculty here hope that considerable attention will be paid to this item.
Line 417 – you may have over stated the “newness” of our buildings. You statement about the need for upgrades is absolutely on the mark, however, many of the buildings date back further than the 1970s – back to the 1940s to 1960s. We would love to be in a 1970s building.
Line 469 and 484 seem to be redundant and could be combined.
In general it seemed that the document focused on the overall growth of the research enterprise on campus, which is a strong point. There were some comments that there should also be a section that deals with the internal goals/plans of the Office of Research.
Overall we felt the intent of the plan is good. We felt it should be more specific and establish metrics/targets for the univieristy to shoot toward.
Thanks for the opportunity to review/comment. UND Safety Staff have reviewed the plan and offer the following feedback from Line 300-334:
Increasing Institutional Support for Research Infrastructure:
While good information was provided regarding inadequate building space, dated systems and equipment, and administrative support, the safety and environmental health aspect of research appears to be left out.
As research grows at our University, the need for additional safety professionals increases. The Safety and Environmental Health Office works in many different ways to assist research on campus. They develop the policies and plans to keep safety protocols in place, handle and store hazardous materials created by certain aspects of research, monitor air quality conditions, prepare emergency response plans, monitor life safety issues 24/7, respond to crisis in labs, provide hazardous material cleanup, and training.
Please consider the need for additional safety professionals in your institutional support section.
I offer the following as suggestions for improvement
–The statement about uncertainity of federal funding seems to be a lame excuse for not setting numeric goals for increasing sponsored research funding–the uncertainity of federal funding is always there– it’s just something we need to deal with
–aerospace related research section should be expanded to include atmos science research jet, DC-8, Engineering UAS research, space studies research, etc.
—Center of Excellence for General Aviation Research–one of a few if not the only federally recognized Centers of Excellence on the UND campus needs to be recognized in this plan as a multi-disciplinary approach to helping the DOT/FAA solve on-going technical problems. If there are other federally recognized centers of excellence they should be recognized also
–the State Centers of Excellence programs on campus should be recognized as well–(unless I missed it)
–the highlighting of researchers seems a bit hap-hazard and appears a bit self serving when their accomplishments pale in comparison to some that are not mentioned. If the plan wants to highlight researchers (and I’m not sure it should) it should concentrate on some very important success stories such as the Wilsnacks research, Leon Osborne’s research and the establishment of his Meridian company with 67 employees, and others of this caliber–Leon’s company epitomizes the results of a very productive research career–maybe there are others like his that need to be highlighted also. The State and legislators want to hear about these types of stories.
–On page 17, V.D. probably should go in the next section on economic development
—I agree with a couple of previous comments, that the plan is hard to read, it’s a bit hard to get the connection between the stories and the plan. Also I agree with Dr. Seames’ previous comments about facilitating the research goals of faculty and addressing goals for the administrative units
—proper citation of federally funded buildings such as the Northern Plains Center for Behavioral Research as a NIH grant funded building needs to be added to the plan (as requied by the NIH)
—Who were the members of committee? what was the process for selection? their names should be included in the plan
—the plan seems to be stating that UND’s indirect cost rate is lower than average because we have more federally funded buildings-if this is so it should be stated and as a result the plan should reflect how UND plans to increase it’s indirect cost rate.
Line 314 – Library support for research involves more than electronic media. Some disciplines continue to work with print materials. Librarians also work with faculty to discover sources and focus research. I suggest editing the statement to read:
E. Fund libraries to meet the diverse research needs.
Line 384-Library programs and services are considered part of the infrastructure. I suggest adding “library programs and services” to the list.
I find this tremendously difficult to read. It feels as if you aren’t actually interested in comments. Is there a PDF available? That would help.
In #209. As part of aerospace research there is no mention of the work done in Human Spaceflight, where UND one of the few universities in the US with this capability. There is no mention of the joint research with NASA on planetary space suits,current funded research. Also, there is no mention on UND research in the development of space simulators.
There is very little content within the plan describing a vision for the Office of Research administrative units. Almost all the content is outside of these units. I suggest you either 1) add specific statements under each major section for each relevant administrative unit (G&C, RD&C, EPSCoR, Tech Xfer, etc) or you add an entire section within the plan about office of research units.
For example, I would like to see a statement that the Office of Research Administrative Units will strive to be service oriented. To work towards a culture of facilitation, where personnel within unit strive to work with researchers to help them achieve their goals. This goes beyond simply making sure all the rules are followed (this is one component) but helping find innovative solutions so that researchers can follow the rules while also achieving their objectives.
The description of the EPSCoR program on page 12 is very inaccurate. EPSCoR is NOT a program funded by NSF, it is a program that many Federal agencies participate in. The NSF award is the largest, but not the only EPSCoR award. This discussion should be revised to be inclusive of all EPSCoR programs. This will help the Office of Research by insuring that the EPSCoR Division is not overly focused on the NSF RII, but is balanced in the acquisition and utilization of all EPSCoR resources.
I suggest that the plan should include a statement that it is an objective of the office of research to provide administrative and other resource support to all EPSCoR programs.
At page 5, line 140: should EPRI be identified in full (is this a widely known acronym)?
At page 5, line 152: it seems that most faculty named in the Plan have a parenthetical identifying their department, but Dr. Gosnold does not. See also page 15 at inset (top).
At page 6, line 158: Mr. Clark is a retired General; should his title reflect his ‘ret.’ status?
At page 7, inset (top): the individual in the photograph does not appear to be identified.
At page 9, line 252: Should “production” be pluralized to conform to “performances” and “showings”?
At page 10, line 259: Should “our understanding of” be inserted after “contributions to”?
At page 11, line 294: Does Grand Forks qualify as “rural”?
At page 12, line 322: There appears to be an editorial note.
At page 13, line 368: “Behavioral” is misspelled.
At page 15, lines 394-5: either insert “a” before “comparable”, or pluralize “institution”.
At page 15, inset (top): the photos could use captions; the photos appear in reverse order from the mention of the individuals in the text.
At page 18, lines 525-532 (and perhaps elsewhere): “million” and “M” are used interchangeably; suggest that a single convention be adopted throughout
Include engineering in the statement about UND’s Uniqueness – law, medical, aerospace and engineering all in one place. There are many examples of rich collaborations that include engineering.
Also, the educational component of the SUNRISE section was not included in the breakout description. K-12 STEM education and undergraduate outreach is a strong component of this program as well
From a Student perspective this is cool to see. One section that I would like to talk about is on Page 8 with the Aerospace research. To the casual observer you would guess that aviation is the only group working on that research. But the engineering department is also heavily involved. I think its important to bring light on to the engineering part as its one of the best examples of undergrad and graduate students working together, its interdisciplinary, there is a large group that works on it, and not only does it help full fill educational goals it also helps students prepare for work in industry. The engineering department gets looked over often as many people lump all the research with the aviation stuff that is happening. Aviation students don’t have any hands on experience with UAS, all those programs are to new, but the engineering students have been working for over two years doing hands on research building and testing things, they deserve to get some of the credit.
Is there a link to download a full PDF version of this draft?