Office of the Provost

for the Faculty and Staff of Washington State University
from Provost Robert C. Bates

Number 9

April 2006

In my last two Progress Reports, I focused on the challenges and opportunities for WSU in the next decade in the area of undergraduate and graduate education. Here the emphasis will be our strategic goals in research, scholarship and arts. I will make the area we call "Engagement" one of the topics of a future email report.

A forecast of our preparations for our next regional accreditation for the University is also provided here. The first step, the appointment of the Accreditation Steering Committee, is slated for next month.

External Views of WSU Research, Scholarship and Arts

Washington State University's position as one of America's leading research institutions has received external validation in several ways during this academic year. One of the most significant was WSU's classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching among the nation's 95 public and private universities with "very high research activity."

This Carnegie classification, which is based both on size of doctoral programs and on levels of research expenditures, places WSU in the top tier of research institutions along with public universities such as Michigan State, Penn State, Purdue, Virginia Tech and, here at home, the University of Washington. A link to more details about the Carnegie classification and its research index is given at the end of this email.

Research expenditures are a broadly used measure of the quality of a university and its faculty. Science and engineering research expenditures at WSU rose from $96.9 million in 1999 to $175.2 million in 2003 (the most recent data available), placing WSU 81st in the nation. Jim Petersen, WSU Vice Provost for Research, points out that during this period, expenditures at WSU rose more rapidly than they did at any of our peer institutions. A link to the relevant National Science Foundation report is at the end of this email.

Further evidence of WSU's greater national visibility is that WSU faculty members have given keynote addresses at prominent national and international meetings and have testified before Congress. More and more, WSU professors are receiving highly prestigious national and international awards such as NSF CAREER, Beckman Young Scholars, Fulbright Scholarships and other honors.

Continuing our Progress

We can feel very good about this external recognition for Washington State University and for our faculty. As an academic community, we set ourselves a series of high goals five years ago and now we are seeing the positive results. Thank you for your contributions to these results. At the same time, we know we have much more that we want to accomplish.

The Office of Research has numerous innovative programs designed to help faculty achieve scholarly success. These include the Mission to DC program, faculty travel grants, faculty development series, Grantwriters LLC and others aimed to promote scholarship, advance faculty reputations and help faculty obtain funding to support their work. Other programs, such as Initiation of Collaboration and Catalyzing the Future, aim to enhance cross-disciplinary links among faculty to foster more interdisciplinary research. Such programs complement the highly successful Innovators Series in Seattle which are designed to advance public understanding of WSU research and its impact on society.

Building on the success of the DC trips, the Office of Research, in collaboration with the WSU Foundation, is now planning an additional program, Mission to NY. The Mission to NY has goals similar to the Mission to DC, but is focused on philanthropic organizations which support scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. This program is especially designed to help faculty in those disciplines, which are not well supported by federal agencies, to obtain sponsored funding for their scholarly endeavors.

At the same time that we focus on faculty success, we are working to improve the transfer of research results to benefit society. WSU has a rich heritage in having our research results used to improve commercial enterprises. To accomplish this, we have strengthened the WSU Research Foundation and Keith Jones was hired as director. New programs such as the Technology Gap Fund were started to increase commercialization of WSU-developed technologies.

Last year, we worked with the University of Washington in seeking a revision to the Washington State Ethics act, which unanimously passed both houses of the 2005 Washington legislature. These changes were designed to facilitate interactions between our researchers and commercial enterprises. As a result, we are now revamping our Conflict of Interest policy. These changes will help our faculty interact with industry and transfer research results to enhance the state's economy.

This is a brief synopsis of our progress on our strategic goal for research, scholarship and arts. We will explore this topic in more detail in a four-page section in WSU Today in the fall.

Preparing for Accreditation

Our ten-year review for reaffirmation of accreditation by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities is rapidly approaching. We have also arrived at a point where we need to take stock of our own Strategic Plan - our accomplishments, as well as our challenges -- and to make decisions about what goals and strategies, both old and new, will most compellingly draw us toward our vision of what WSU should be.

For the first time, we will be able to use the accreditation review for both purposes. We will review and evaluate the entire institution against the set of standards developed and revised over time by all of the NWCCU members, as well as against the goals, strategies, and benchmarks that, working together, we built into the Strategic Plan.

Larry James, Associate Executive Vice President, has agreed to chair the Steering Committee for this work. The full membership will be appointed in May. The work of this committee - including the subcommittees to address each of the Standards - will get underway as soon as the fall semester begins. Our self-report will be in print and uploaded to the Web by December 2008 and the evaluation team will visit us in April 2009.

You may be asked to serve on the Steering Committee, on a subcommittee addressing a specific standard, on your unit's self-study group, to respond to a survey, and/or to meet with the Evaluation Team during their visit. I am counting on everyone's contribution to make this a relevant and productive project that moves us toward our collective aspirations for Washington State University's future.

Robert C. Bates

Online resources:

Office of the Provost

http://provost.wsu.edu

Archive of Past Provost's Dialogues

http://experience.wsu.edu/depts/depts.asp?dept=34

Robert C. Bates is Provost and Academic Vice President at WSU.

Office of the Provost, PO Box 641046, Washington State University, Pullman WA 99164-1046, 509-335-5581, Contact Us