Chancellor pushes research

Due to an editing error, a bar graph in this story dropped the word “undergraduate” when describing the proportion of College of Arts and Sciences faculty involved in research.  The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
 

Chancellor Holden Thorp has stepped into his post at a time when universities are competing ever more intensely for research funds.

Thorp is new to the role of chief fundraiser for the University, and he’s assumed that mantle in the midst of an ambitious campaign to raise external research funding to $1 billion by 2015.

But Thorp is familiar with the on-the-ground complexities of university research — the grant writing, the regulations, the science and the economics. And those involved with research at UNC expect that to help their cause.

Thorp began his research career as a UNC undergraduate in the chemistry labs, and it peaked when he returned as professor and department chair.

As chancellor, he has some ideas about the direction he would like to see other University research take.

He said he wants more of a focus on undergraduate research, and he’d like to see more risks taken to get faculty research to market.

“I’m an experimentalist; I like to try things,” Thorp said in an interview. At his first open-house forum as chancellor, he told students:

“If you all don’t experience what it is that makes a research university different, then ultimately the way that we have been doing public higher education for 200 years is going to be in danger.”

Undergraduate research

Since 2006, the University has been advocating for an expansion of undergraduate research opportunities in all disciplines.

Though that initial push was before Thorp’s time as an administrator, he seems to be in step.

“That’s why I became the chancellor,” Thorp said at the Aug. 26 open house. “I became chancellor so I could do everything I could to integrate research and education.”

In 2006-07, 49 percent of faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences, UNC’s largest school, acted as mentors for undergraduate research.

That role is a considerable investment on the part of busy faculty, who receive no compensation in return.

Thorp said he’d like to see that change, though he hasn’t provided specifics.

“We’ve never had any kind of a push system that says, ‘We want you to take this many undergraduates in your lab, and here’s what we’ll do to defray the costs,’” Thorp said. “We basically have an all-volunteer army at this point.”

Robert Lowman, associate vice chancellor for research, said the best faculty care about teaching students. If they don’t, he said, undergraduates won’t understand “how we create new knowledge” or learn cutting-edge theories.

For example, Lowman said, if his own introductory biology professor hadn’t emphasized ongoing research to undergraduates, he wouldn’t have learned about DNA.

As more universities, especially private ones, separate the functions of teaching and research, UNC is looking to make the bond stronger.

“We are an extremely collaborative university when it comes to research,” Lowman said. “It’s important to recognize that there is an interplay between research and teaching.”

Technology transfer

As a chemistry professor, Thorp stood out in his enthusiasm for moving research from his lab into the marketplace, a process called technology transfer.

Thorp holds 19 issued or pending patents, and he’s spun off two companies based on technology he developed in his UNC lab.

He said he’d like to see more faculty do the same.

“I think we’ve got a lot of arcane and complicated procedures about how to do that, which not everybody can take on,” he said.

Technology transfer is a long and unpredictable journey that starts with a faculty member’s invention.

After helping to patent the invention — a process that takes time, money and legal know-how — the University’s Office of Technology Development looks to license the technology to an existing company or, more rarely, start a new company. It can be years before the University sees any returns on its investment.

Though Thorp said he’d like to see the office able to take more risks and push more research into market, staff who direct technology transfer said it will be difficult to become more prolific without more resources.

“You hit a point where the volume of work grows faster than the staff,” said Cathy Innes, director of the Office of Technology Development. “I actually need to expand, but I don’t have the money to do so.”

Innes’ office has six staff to educate the entire roster of University professors about their works’ potential for technology transfer.

Funding for the staff comes from overhead costs tacked onto federal research grants. Thorp hasn’t talked with the office about his plans since becoming chancellor, but he has said he wants to get new resources for it.

As it stands, the office might not be able to meet Thorp and others’ hopes for a flood of new research commercialization.

“It would smother us,” said Mark Crowell, associate vice chancellor for economic development and technology transfer. “But if we had one or 10 more bodies, there’s no question in my mind that we could do more.”

Funds for research

Three-quarters of UNC research is funded by federal grants.

“Without it we would see a whole host of negative consequences, from a disinclination to go into the hard sciences by students, to cuts in ongoing research,” said Karen Regan, director of the Office of Federal Affairs.

“It’s just got these ripple effects throughout our campus.”

The University ranked 10th in federal research funding among public universities in 2006.

Federal funding for UNC research has climbed 26 percent during the past five years, despite cuts to overall federal research spending during that same time.

Regan attributes that climb to the quality of UNC faculty and their requests for funds.

To maintain that competitive edge, the University will need to continue to bolster its reputation and faculty. A hurdle might be the looming retirement age for many senior faculty, Lowman said.

“We were concerned about what would happen when some of our older researchers, with international reputations and bringing in millions and millions of dollars, retire.”

That could affect younger professors’ research as well, since they often work on projects funded by the grants of their older colleagues.

The extent to which Thorp can address those issues is still unclear. He has committed to shepherd the expansion of University research however he can, whether through fundraising or general support.

“I want to validate what I think is one of the great American ideas, that is, a public research university.”



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