When President Roderick McDavis took office in 2004, he promised to shape Ohio University into a prominent research university. More than three years later, it's clear that it was an overly optimistic promise. This really isn't news either. The Post has reported before about how outside funding for research will never reach the overly optimistic goal of $100 million in five years, which McDavis outlined in that same speech.
But recently, the university took another step that will hurt the effort to increase research. In the budget approved by the Board of Trustees last Friday, graduate student funding was cut by 3.87 percent ' a reduction of about $561,000. Cutting this funding could result in the reduction of graduate student stipends and even possibly reduce the graduate student tuition waiver. Without these incentives, attracting top-notch graduate students, who are the primary researchers at any university aside from the faculty, will be difficult.
The cut is indicative of the mixed signals that the administration has sent in the past few years about how this university will strike the balance between undergraduate education and postgraduate research.
While graduate student funding is cut, McDavis continues to push most colleges to expand research output. In this year's dean evaluations, faculty across the university questioned the viability of this push. As administrators call for more research, faculty has to engage in a difficult balancing act between instructing and researching.
Meanwhile, the university's push for increasing external funding for this research is fledgling. The Post reported earlier this year that federal funding for research at the university fell by $3.2 million, despite a ratcheting-up of lobbying effort. Overall external funding for research decreased by $3.8 million last year.
With McDavis turning more toward being a sort of ambassador and pseudo-lobbyist for the university, maybe he can help increase the funding. It's possible ' even after two years of bad news in the national press. The department of mechanical engineering in The Russ College of Engineering, after enduring several national magazine, newspaper and broadcast pieces highlighting the plagiarism problem, actually had a $2.5 million increase in its outside funding last year.
The push for more research is leading the university toward establishing a new identity. It's a fundamental question of the balance between undergraduate education and research. With that in mind, it's not necessarily wrong to cut graduate stipends. It might be best to push certain schools to move toward more research while other schools should focus more on undergraduate education.
But again, it's not clear what exactly is going on at the moment or how the university will strike such a balance. Yet this is an important issue, and the achievement of an agreeable equilibrium could become the legacy of the McDavis administration ' for better or for worse.
This starts with continuing to reach out to the faculty. The university must also redefine its strategic plan to clearly state how this will work, and that includes creating a five-year operational plan that illustrates exactly how Vision Ohio priorities translate into funding, as the Board of Trustees recently urged. The burden of establishing a new identity rests equally upon the shoulders of McDavis and Kathy Krendl, executive vice president and provost. With the shake-up that boosted her power over day-to-day academic affairs, many of these decisions will be made in her office.
Getting this right could help McDavis regain the trust and respect of the university, including students and faculty. If he still plans to be president after next year or if the trustees don't ask him to step aside after another round of no-confidence votes next year, he needs to find a plan ' whether it be reaching for the highest star
or settling for one a little closer. 17
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Budget cuts to graduate student funding yet another mixed signal sent from administration
