T1 _- *". ,. P'age Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Uscientists examine every corner of the un , Tuesday, August 27, 1968 s vuerse1 By ELEANOR BRAUN A man today is washing dishes to find the best dish- washing machine. In another county a man is interviewing everyone in a small town to find out what families' his- tories of heart disease were. Both of thesehmen . are re- searchers from the University. They are encouraged by the University and the nation to expand the limtis of human knowledge in every direction. Their pursuits and successes have grown, but the same prog- ress that has led to greater dis- coveries has led the researchers to at times nearly choke on their own growth. Full recognition has been given to the importance of re- search at the University. Much of the University's expansion in the past 20 years -- buildings, laboratories, computers, reac- tors - are a direct result of the increasing number of research projects taken on by the Uni- versity. Roughly $60 million in feder- al funds comes to the Univer- sity for research making the University one of the largest institutional recipients of fed- eral funds. University research in the years before World War II was supported entirely by industry and other private sources. When the war made military and sci- entific advancement a para- mount goal, federal monies en- tered the picture. After the war the federal money and the em- phasis on research in engineer- ing and the physical sciences remained. Eventually, government inter- est grew in the life sciences -. medicine, public health, den- tistry, mental health - and research took ,increasing sup- port from federal grants and contracts. While the pre-war funds had been gifts and en- dowments to individuals or schools on a need basis, the post-war system became one of substantial grants to the Uni- versity on the basis of what re- search services University pro- grams could provide. ' With this greater federal support came the need for cent-by-cent. accounting, and consequently the "project sys- tem" arose, whereby faculty members conceived ideas for autonomous projects, and ap- plied individually for financial sponsorship. The eventual result was the complex systemwhich exists at the present time, with several centers operating diversified programs, all of which feed for organization into the central office headed by Director of Research Robert E. Burroughs and Vice President for Univer- sity Research A. Geoffrey Nor- man. The function of the Office of Research Administration is, es- sentially, the direction of all re- search projects; but this is a complex task involving the coordination of all the centers, the issuing of reports to the ad- ministration and faculty, and the publication of several news- letters on the progress and ac- tivities of the Office. Burroughs calls the project system a more efficient opera- tion than the old one where the individual deans adminis- tered research, because there is a single office which is respon- sible for maintaining the stan- dards and funds of the spon- sors. All "nonproductive facul- ty legwork" is eliminated by the Office, as is the need for sev eral possibly contraditory bud- gets. Finally, the vast staff re- quired for all the projects is di- rected more simply from a single office. But there are many problems the great increase in University research have created that the administration does not seem able to solve. Once underway smaller proj- ects become consolidated into large programs that tend to ac- quire a great deal of momen- tum. Equipment is purchased, building space is filled, often new administrative units spring up, in practice if hot in organ- ization charts, and personnel are hired. The University may soon find itself with an ongo-. ing progress that doesn't really' fit into an overall research pro- gram or that creates faculty, graduate, salary or other im- balances. The $52 million research pro- gram is unquestionably worth the administrative problems, but certainly more changes will be made in the department and University power structure at the rate Michigan's research projects are growing. With nearly 1,500 paid and unpaid faculty members con- ducting research projects, and about 3700 graduate and under- graduate students working in those projects, an excellent student-teacher ratio has de- veloped .for the important edu- cational purposes of research. Students and faculty mem- bers work together every day, on a personal basis, on subject matter which is related to nor- mal classroom material. Research activity is intended to be an integral requirement of a faculty member's time, not to rob him of normal teaching time; about 20 to 30 per cent of research, employing 571 faculty members and operating on a re- search budget of about $13 million. Much of the Medical School work is done, as it is in other. operations, through the work of students on fellowships. Under a fellowship, qualified students become eligible for permission to do advanced research under a faculty member. In the Kresge Hearing Re- search Institute of the Medical Center, most faculty members are involved in a group project which is being financed by a single major grant. The sum of over $246,000 was awarded by the Public Health Service to the Institute for a comprehensive, long-term investigation into the causes of deafness. This project is seen as the country's most concerted effort to date in hear- ing research. Also included in the Health Sciences Division is the School of Public Health, headed by Dean Myron Wegman. Forty- five per cent of the School's to- tal budget, some $4 inillion in 1966-67, goes toward research; this does not include whatever, supplementary funds may be al- located for private investiga- tions. A large variety of research projects are presently in opera- tion in the School's seven de- partments., One of the most ambitious projects is the Tecumseh Health for the work often consists of inter-college teams. Another University researcha center which employs interdis- ciplinary work teams is the now-famous Institute of Social Research, under the director- ship of Dr. Rensis, Likert. Now located in the six-story brick and glass building on Thomp- son Street, ISR looks back on. more tlan 20 years of Innova- tion in the social science. re- search field. Founded 'in the summer of 1946 by Likert and four other men, then of the U.S. Challenge of quite a different nature than the social-science- oriented, ISR is faced by an- other University research cen- ter, the Institute for Science. and Technology. Established in 1957 at the suggestion of then Governor G. Mennen Williams, IST was pro- posed for the purpose of meet- ing the challenge presented by rapidly advancing R u s s i a n technology, which had culmin- ated in that year with the launching of the earth's first satellite.% "Centers lifge the Medical School and IST aire among the' largest University research facil- ides, but they are by no. means the only ones of importance." .. ' i:.av;,"::.1."r .4}sd:"..", :'v::}it?': rrr: ..?kd rf ''"'v r} Research, teaching go hand in hand "With this greater federal support came the nzeed for cent-by-cent accounting, and conse- quently tihe project system' arose." -ieA54saaai60 sfsdi25 2siltMI is S *. "'.'.'.. . . . ..5152 itis Es5018%29 STUDENT BOOK SGRVICG LARGEST USED BOOK STOCK IN TOWN OPEN 'TiL MIDNIGHT DURING. BOOK RUSH "Where the Virtuous Buy Their ooks" Department of Agriculture, the Institute began as the Survey Research Center, with Regental approval and self-sufficient funds. At the present time the ISR is the largest University-based institution of its kind with al- most 700 professional and stu- dent staff members and a bud- get of well over $4 million. These funds, which come from government, foundation, and private sources, represent a huge growth over the 1946 bud- get of $200,000. The main objective of the Institute has been, since its in- ception, to make meaningful contributions to human knowl- edge through research in the sciences of human behavior. This objective is now achieved by the Institute through its three component centers: the Survey Research Center, 'the Research Center for Group Dy- namics, and the Center for Re- search on Utilization of Scien- tific Knowledge. One of the ISR's iiportant stepchildren is the interdisci- plinary Mental Health-Research Institute. It has been called everything from a bastion of systems theory to a spawner of radicalism. A unit of the Department of Psychiatry of the Medical School, MHRI's main original function was discovery of some of the causes, of mental illness and development of strategies for its prevention and cure. The already-operating Wil- low Run and Great Lakes cen- ters were transferred to 1ST and it has since generated sev- eral new projects, on which various schools and colleges collaborate. The Great Lakes Research Division is the largest of these; it is headed by Prof. David. C. Chandler of the Zoology De- partment. With much of its present work supported by the U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Great Lakes Division has ,re +cently developed' an active in- terest in the research of water pollution., The Great Lakes surround- ing Michigantare becoming so polluted :that .they'.support hardly any life; to investigate this problem, the Division op- erates three vessels on the lakes whichrhave -specializedtech- nical research facilities. Chand- ler says the Lakes programs are "not spectacular." but that they do convey needed information which will yield long-term re- sults. One such program deals with water chemistry - the. relationship of water chemicals to pollution. Another investi- gates the amount of air pollu- tion which affects lake water, and several new projects were begun during the summer. Centers like the Medical School and IST are among the largest University research fa- cilities, but they are by no means the only ones of im- portance. It was in the engineering col- lege that research at the 'Uni- versity first got started back before World War II, and a great deal of the research pro- gram is still there. The aerospace delgrtment, presides over a comfortable amount of space research spon- sored by the National Aeronau- tics and Space Administration and the Air Force. Myriad proj- ects are organized into the Space Physics Research Lab, the High Altitude Research Lab, the Propulsion Lab, and the Wind Tunnel Labs. There are others in some of the schools and colleges which also contribute a great deal. In the School of Business Admin- istration, the Bureau of Busi- ness Research is investigating the outlook for construction, plumbing and heating in De- troit, as well as studying the research of business accounting, under the sponsorship of the General Electric Company. The College of Architecture and Design is studying urban transportation, and the School of Natural Resources is looking into the future of city planning. In the literary college, a re- search budget of $8 million an- nually finances over 350 proj- ects in many of the school's departments. One interdisciplinary research program takes dlace in the Area Research Centers, which aims to facilitate international research. There are five Centers covering I Japan, China, South and South- east Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Russia and Eastern Europe. Faculty mem- bers involved with each Center teach at least one University course. These varied facets of re- searchsprograms illustrate the complex nature of research at the University: despite the tightly-organized system which originates in the offices of Norman and Burroughs, this aspect of University life is an extremely active and de- manding one. It is also a pro- gressive side of the University, since new projects are con- stantly coming into existence as old' problems are solved. For every insight gained in a ' particular field, a thousand new questions' arise; it is the function of research workers to seek whatever answers they may . find to such questions. a teacher's salaried time is ex- pected to be occupied by some form of research. Individually initiated, orient- ed for research and teaching, centrally administered, t h e framework for the project sys- tem is the institute or center. Some of these centers were established by the Regents, either through specific provi- sions in the Regents' Bylaws, or by Regental approval. Oth- ers, like the Mortimer E. Cooley Laboratory, were set up by schools or colleges. One of the largest is the Uni- versity's Division of Health Sci- ences, which includes the Med- ical School. It accounts for a large part of the University's Project, under the auspices of the Epidemiology Department. It is a scheme by Which the entire town of Tfcumseh, Mich- igan is under complete health surveillance to determine the causes of heart disease. This department, where major stu- dies in infantile paralysis oc- curred several years ago, is now studying flu vaccine, the use of drugs in leukemia, a whooping cough vaccine, and other pos- sible remedies for long-time public health problems. A mixture of the natural and the social sciences, the School of Public Health conducts sev- eral of its research programs in connection with other schools and colleges, and the personnel 1215 S. 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