UCSC can take pride in the recognized accomplishments of the past eight years; it has achieved considerable distinction in research. Given the recency of its creation and the size of its faculty, the campus has compiled a highly enviable record in this regard. A report on "citation impact" in the physical sciences found that between 1981 and 1991 UCSC ranked third among all universities in the study and sixth among all U.S. research institutions. A recent study of research productivity at major universities has established that social scientists at UCSC have the highest per capita number of scholarly publications of any UC campus by a wide margin-indeed, a higher output than any single flagship public institution in the national sample of 300 universities for which data were gathered. The same study ranked UCSC seventh nationally for research productivity in humanities and arts. In addition to these indicators of research quality, external funding has dramatically increased since the last review.
Still, a searching assessment of research at UCSC cannot rely on two or three isolated measures which place the outstanding achievements of this campus in sharpest relief. This section will instead outline the programs and funding mechanisms which provide support to faculty research and will identify issues in need of resolution.
The State of California's Master Plan for Higher Education prescribes a unique role for the University of California in the area of research. While UC shares with the state university and community college systems the goal of educating pre-baccalaureate students and has a special but non-exclusive role in the training of graduate students, it alone has the advancement of knowledge through scholarly research as one of three primary aspects of its institutional mission.
UCSC, the youngest campus in the UC system and the one most identified from its inception with undergraduate instruction, has yet to resolve fully the tensions inherent in its mixed charge. At times it has suffered from the perception, both externally and among some members of the campus community, that excellence in research is accorded a lesser priority than excellence in educating its undergraduate students. In fact, the vision of those who founded the campus was quite explicit: research and teaching were to be assigned equal weight.
The first General Catalog stated, "The purpose of Santa Cruz is not to emphasize undergraduate teaching at the cost of research or graduate instruction but to see that all three exist in a proper balance, that each of the university's major constituencies is free to develop in its particular and distinctive way, thereby making the university a lively and productive community." Although there was a desire to avoid the more impersonal aspects of the large American "multiversity," the presumption was then and remains today that undergraduate education is enhanced by contact with a research-active faculty, by the presence of graduate students, by the opportunity to participate in the research experience, and by the additional facilities which extramural grants make possible.
Institutional Support for Individual Faculty Research
The Office of Contracts and Grants assists faculty in securing external research grants. Organized under the supervision of the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, its staff helps identify potential funding sources, reviews preliminary proposals, assists in the preparation of budgets, and administers funds awarded to successful proposals. Over the past several years, roughly 60 percent of all grants submitted through Contracts and Grants have been funded.
While the data in Table C.1 are limited because they represent only those proposals submitted through Contracts and Grants, they do show the substantial increases that have occurred overall, both in the number of proposals and in the value of awards. In fiscal year 1992-93 actual awards totaled over $30,000,000, more than double the corresponding figure at the beginning of the review period. Funding in Natural Sciences also doubled and extramural research support for the Division of Social Sciences nearly tripled from 1990 to 1992 (increasing from 1.9 million to 5.4 million dollars).
The pre-eminence of the Natural Sciences Division in external grant activity is the consequence of a number of factors, not least of which is the greater availability of funding in this area. The other academic divisions have intensified their efforts by assigning additional staff to search out funding opportunities. Research coordinators assume a proactive role in matching sources of funding to faculty interests and expertise; they also provide information and application forms upon request. They occasionally sponsor grant-writing workshops for faculty and graduate students, although faculty attendance at these sessions is reported to be very uneven. In addition, Social Sciences has instituted an incentive program under which the division shares the costs of administration of new external grants.
Internal funding of faculty research takes many different forms at UCSC. The most important sources of grants for individual faculty members are the academic divisions, the Graduate Division, and the Committee on Research (COR) of the Academic Senate. The academic divisions provide: start-up funds for newly hired faculty to be used in purchasing lab and computer equipment or other research materials; Junior Faculty Development Awards, which make possible course relief and research support for assistant professors; and divisional research grants awarded for proposals submitted by individual faculty members.
The Committee on Research disposes of a budget of about $300,000 per year. It solicits proposals on an annual basis for small grants in support of research activity. Roughly two-thirds of this money is used to sponsor individual faculty research projects, with the remainder devoted to travel to scholarly meetings. This budget has remained relatively constant or declined since the last review, despite increasing numbers of faculty.
Faculty members who share common interests are encouraged to join together to pursue joint programs of research. Such associations vary in size, scope, and duration as well as in their degree of formal organization and the level and source of funding.
The simplest and most modest research grouping that enjoys formal recognition is the Focused Research Activity (FRA). It typically consists of a small number of faculty from a single division who receive funding (in the range of $500 to $10,000) from the respective dean to defray the costs of staff assistance and minor research expenses. Such grants are normally made for a period of three years, during which time the group is expected to seek external funding. The campus encourages the creation of FRAs but expects that, although many will flourish for a limited period, only a few will establish themselves on a more permanent basis.
The Organized Research Activity (ORA) formerly represented the highest level of collaborative research organization at the campus level. With the decentralization of research funds to the academic divisions, the category has fallen into disuse. There are no ORAs in existence at this time and none are presently contemplated.
The Organized Research Unit (ORU) represents a still higher level of coordination. Its establishment requires both campus and systemwide review, culminating in approval by the Regents. Until the last ten years, approval of an ORU carried with it a grant of funds from the Office of the President (on the order of $50,000). More recently, no systemwide resources have been provided for new ORUs, which depend entirely on external funding and modest grants from the campus.
A Multi-campus Research Unit (MRU) is the most elaborate framework for collaborative research in that it involves members from two or more institutions within the UC system. The scope of their operations and budgets varies widely, from Lick Observatory to the Dickens Project, both of which are centered on the Santa Cruz campus.
In addition to the recognized categories of collaborative research, there exists a bewildering array of less clearly defined entities which are engaged to varying degrees in research. Many have assumed the titles of "programs," "facilities," "centers," and even "focused research groups" (FRGs), but these designations have no well-defined meaning when applied to research organization and are, in some cases, reserved for other purposes. It would be useful for the campus to clarify both the nomenclature and the relationship of these entities to the academic programs with which they are most closely associated.
Table C.2 lists the FRAs, ORAs, ORUs, and MRUs currently in existence at UCSC along with the amount and source of their university funding. MRUs listed are those with administrative centers located at UCSC. UCSC faculty also are members of many other MRUs on other campuses.
Outside studies of scholarly impact like those cited at the beginning of this section are not the only indicators of the distinction of the research programs and faculty at UCSC. In addition to the steep rise in the level of external funding on campus, principally in the natural and social sciences, faculty members have garnered an impressive variety of scholarly honors. The campus boasts of one MacArthur fellow, one University Professor, four Kellogg fellows, thirty-eight Guggenheim fellows, fifty-one National Endowment for the Humanities fellows, seventy-two Fulbright fellows, and ten members of the National Academy of Sciences. This record of productivity and distinction flatly contradicts any perceptions of UCSC as a university that places a diminished emphasis on research.
Still, current trends and future prospects are troubling. The state budget crisis threatens institutional support for research in a number of ways:
These concerns remain for the moment unrealized, and the experience since the last review is unambiguously positive. The state has made substantial new investments in the area of research, and the campus is proceeding even now with major projects such as the expansion of the Long Marine Lab, a new building for environmental studies, a United States Geological Survey facility, and a new music facility. UCSC is also involved with a cooperative plan for the conversion of the Fort Ord military base, closed as a result of recent defense cutbacks. Although still at a preliminary stage, the campus anticipates the installation of a major research facility on the base site, focusing on science, technology, and public policy. Despite the uncertainties of the future, UCSC can consider itself well-equipped to surmount the obstacles in the path of its development as a research university of the first order.