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Wednesday, January 19, 2011 // The Statement 5
W ith more than $1.1 billionspent on
research last year, the University
is a major competitor in the global
research community.
It's viewed not only as an economic driver in
the state of Michigan, but leaders throughout the
country and the globe look to Ann Arbor to help
solve real issues affecting our world today. From
legislators in Washington to executives on Wall
Street or in Silicon Valley, the University of Michi-
gan is regarded as one of the world's foremost
research universities.
And now, at a time when advances in technol-
ogy are occurring more rapidly than ever before
and with frequent scientific breakthroughs, insti-
tutions like the University are being thrust into
the spotlight as sources of knowledge and agents
of change that can help address the problems we
face today and the issues of tomorrow.
It's a tall order since many individuals believe
the primary responsibility of universities needs
to be educating students. However, it's something
that top officials at the University of Michigan say
they hope to expand and build on as they rethink
the way faculty and students come together to
learn and research.
A HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATION
Though industry leaders and elected officials
alike look to the University for answers, the role of
research universities hasn't always been placed so
prominently in working to solve the issues of our
era.
In fact, as Stephen Forrest, the University's
vice president for research, said it wasn't until
several decades ago that people outside academia
even viewed universities as a source of creating
knowledge.
"Traditionally, probably up to about 40 maybe
30 years ago even, universities were regarded
as places that stored knowledge ... sort of like a
library," Forrest explained in an interview earlier
this month. "And then a transformation started to
occur."
With the transformation came a new view of
what role research universities could play in soci-
ety - shifting to a system in which universities
could draw students and faculty together through
research to both teach and help combat serious
world issues.
"It really took root as time went on that uni-
versities were places that weren't just repositories
of knowledge, but were places where new knowl-
edge was built primarily," Forrest said. "And
they've really taken that role in our society as the
primary location where new knowledge is gener-
ated."
However, the change has led some to criticize
faculty at major research universities for caring
more about their research than about teaching
students. Many students on college campuses have
grumbled at least once to a friend about how one
of their professors doesn't care about teaching, but
instead only wants to focus on his or her research.
And while such criticism may indeed have
its place with choice faculty members, three of
the University's top officials took a very differ-
ent stance. University President Mary Sue Cole-
man, Provost Philip Hanlon and Forrest told The
Michigan Daily in a series of interviews over the
past month that faculty research is fundamental
to quality student education.
BALANCING TEACHING AND
RESEARCH
In a meeting lastmonth in her second-
floor office suite in the Fleming Administration
Building, Coleman made it clear that she believes
research and teaching go hand in hand.
"A lot of people think about it in two separate
boxes, I don't," Coleman said, responding to a
question about the "proper" balance of teaching
and research at the University.
"What I think about is that if you're able to
expose students to the cutting edge and you're
able to learn from somebody who's actually doing
the work, that you get a richer experience than if
you don't."
This is a view shared by other top leaders at the
University like Hanlon, who said the University's
core missions of teaching, research, patient care
and service are all intertwined.
But it's Forrest who perhaps articulates the
administration's position best.
"From an educational point of view, I think
the research enterprise is absolutely inextricably
linked with the educational mission because to
really learn things, you have to learn things at the
forefront."
Forrest continued by explaining that today's
college students are seeing changes in entire
generations of technology while in school. With
such rapid changes, he said, it's necessary to learn
directly from the people making those changes to
stay up to date when learning.
"What you really want to be doing is learning
from people who are part of that revolution and
become part of that revolution while you're an
undergraduate student and certainly as a graduate
student," Forrest said.
And for Forrest, learning in a laboratory is
much more effective than reading a book.
A graduate of the University of California-Berk-
ley, Forrest took a few years off before enrolling at
the University of Michigan for his graduate stud-
ies. Forrest claims he forgot nearly everything he
learned in his undergraduate studies because he
didn't have any hands on experiences with the
material.
"I actually went through all of my undergradu-
ate education without a research experience in a
laboratory where you're seeking new knowledge,"
Forrest said.
It wasn't until he came to the University for
his graduate studies that he was able to work in
a lab and apply his learning to real world issues -
something he says made the material stick with
him.
"I was amazed at howI had virtually forgotten
everything that I had learned as a physics student
when I came to the University of Michigan," For-
rest recalled. "It was only when I was here as a
graduate student, where I paired the book to the
knowledge that I was generating in the laboratory,
that it stuck."
RETHINKING HOW
RESEARCH IS DONE
But setting up cookie-cutter laboratory practi-
cums for students isn't enough to compete in
today's education and research worlds. Coleman,
Hanlon and Forrest all say there is more work that
the University can do to continue driving the suc-
cess of the University's research enterprise, which
helps to also drive its academic mission.
With that in mind, University administrators
have been working to leverage the breadth and
depth of the expertise of faculty at the University
in clustered research areas like health care ser-
vices and functional, molecular and structural
imaging.
With ongoing efforts in Washington and across
the country to understand what lawmakers
want, University officials work to make sure that
research being done at the University is on track
with regional, national and international priorities.
Doing so helps ensure that researchers at the
University can net funding for their projects. And
with an overall research budget that has almost
doubled in the past decade, the work seems to be
paying off.
But in today's tough economic times - the
State Senate Fiscal Agency projected last month
that the state will face a $1.85 billion deficit in the
next fiscal year - it's more important than ever
that University researchers and administrators do
everything they can to stay ahead of the curve.
"The last couple of years have really changed
everything in the country, and I think everything
requires some rethinking as the state and federal
governments grapple with what appears to be
really daunting budget challenges," Hanlon said
last month. "It's a time to rethink everything."
One way top officials at the University are doing
this is to restructure the way research is conducted.
Instead of taking a more traditional approach
and having faculty members work in small labo-
ratories where they focus on a single aspect of
somethingthey're interested in, many researchers
at the University are now taking a more interdis-
ciplinary approach by teaming up with groups of
faculty members from different disciplines across
campus to attack a problem from its core.
And though strength may come in numbers, it's
still a massive undertaking - not only to solve the
large real world problems being tackled, but also
to coordinate the number of researchers working
on different aspects of the issue and to get faculty
to buy in.
"We have historically had a sort of bottom up
approach to the problems we solve and the impacts
we have. That's great, it allows all the faculty mem-
bers to be entrepreneurs and figure out what it is
they're most interested in," Hanlon said. "But what
it means is that, as a university, you don't take on in
an organized way some really big problems.
"I think it would be really neat if we as a univer-
sity could be coordinated and organized around
some really, really big problems in a sort of deliber-
ate way," Hanlon added. "It's not that we don't end
up looking at important problems, we absolutely
do, but we don't try to organize that effort."
A DIFFERENT BLUEPRINT
Effectively urging researchers to move away
from the current model of research and instead
move to a model where individual research efforts
are clustered around one or two major real world
problems isn't easy.
Despite this, it's something that Coleman says
the University is better positioned to do than most
other universities. And Forrest says it's something
the University must do.
See RESEARCH, Page 8B