Commentary

Report of U.T. Dallas Research Advisory Board Meeting: Globalization, Nonlinear Growth, Name Branding

Da Hsuan Feng
Vice President for Research and Graduate Education
The University of Texas at Dallas

Research is the soul of a university.

Four years ago, in order to solidify an intense research atmosphere, UT Dallas established a Research Advisory Board (RAB) (http://www.utdallas.edu/research/ext_advice_council.htm). Members of RAB are regionally, nationally and/or internationally accomplished individuals. They come from academia, industry and government and all have palpable interest in as well as deep knowledge of research universities.

After four years of development, UT Dallas’ RAB has reached a level that members can identify themselves as being integral parts of UT Dallas and believe that the input of RAB will influence and impact the university’s research growth in the coming crucial decade.

RAB meets twice a year, in March and November. There is also an established tradition of a downtown Dallas reception the evening before the meeting. The reception offers RAB members a relaxed atmosphere and an opportunity to interact with numerous Metroplex community leaders.

This report is about the one just concluded on March 25, 2005.

A keynote speech for this RAB meeting was delivered by Dr. Wei Zhao, Director of Computer and Network Systems, National Science Foundation and Associate Vice President for Research. Texas A&M University. He talked about his personal view on the current intellectual status of computer science.

I gave a brief “state of research” report to the Board. I began by saying that UT Dallas is at a cusp in its development. The coming decade will determine whether it can become a great university or not. A number of critical developments in the past couple of years have given the university community a tremendous sense of optimism. They are:

1. Dr. David E. Daniel, an individual with impressive credentials, is UT Dallas’ new president. It is normal that whenever there is new leadership for any organization, there is inevitably a sense of optimism and anticipation.
2. Research expenditure of UT Dallas has soared to an all time high of around $30 million per year. The projection for FY05 is even higher. While the dollar amount is not all encompassing, it does indicate that “research fever” is high and is probably here to stay. The challenge for UT Dallas is how to charter a course so that in the next decade or two, research expenditures will be on par with some of the best research universities in the nation, around several hundred million dollars.
3. All great universities in the 21st century have global outreach. To this end, a number of very exciting new international collaborations with research universities/institutes in Korea, China, India, Russia, Great Britain and Mexico are now in place.
4. There is no such thing as a great university without outstanding students. It is exciting to note that the quality of incoming freshmen, measured by the average SAT scores, is very high by Texas’ standard. In fact, for the entering freshmen class of 2004, UT Dallas’ SAT average of 1239 is the highest among all public universities in Texas. While this is welcoming news, it presents additional challenges to UT Dallas in the coming decades. Can UT Dallas continue to increase its freshmen class size and also increase the average SAT scores? After all, great US universities such as Georgia Tech and UC San Diego, admitted more freshmen than we do, and with much higher SAT averages.
5. In 2004, The State of Texas initiated the “Project Emmitt” and began infusing $200 million to UT Dallas, to be matched by a $100 million capitol campaign. This effort will undoubtedly significantly upgrade UT Dallas’ science and engineering infrastructures, both hardware and human. Just several months ago, the university had a "ground breaking ceremony" for a new $100 million state-of-the-art research building of natural sciences and engineering. This ceremony was simultaneously held with Texas Instruments' ground breaking for its state-of-the-art $3 billion wafer fabrication facility near UT Dallas. With this as background, I believe that the goal of UT Dallas emerging as one of the top universities in the United States, and possibly the world, within the foreseeable future is reachable. While at the local level, things do look “rosy”, there are nevertheless challenges. One of them is how to attract the best and the brightest faculty members to UT Dallas in particular and Texas in general.  I mentioned that to reach UT Dallas’ lofty goals, the University must grow “nonlinearly”. I urge the Board to assist the University to define the dimensions of nonlinearity and the roadmap for a nonlinear growth.

 

Globalization was very much a theme of this Board meeting.

1. It began during the reception the evening before, in which Chancellor Fujia Yang of Nottingham University discussed the importance of this concept for all research universities, no matter where they are located.
2. During the meeting, Dr. Rodolfo Hernandez, Director of the US-Mexico Study Center of UT Dallas summarized “UT Dallas’ 10 Years of Collaboration with Mexico.”
3. The roadmap of UT Dallas - Mexico collaboration outlined by Dr. Hernandez inspired Dr. J. U. Seo, chairman of Korea Foundation for International Cooperation of Science and Technology to say that it could be a model for UT Dallas and Korea’s collaboration in the coming decade.
4. One of UT Dallas’ newest faculty members, Professor Alain Bensoussan, talked about the “International Center for Risk Management and Analysis” which he directs. Once again, Dr. Bensoussan made it clear that the Center intends to create an atmosphere for international participation.
5. Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Dean of the School of Management, presented his School’s global bibliometric “Ranking of Research” of Business Schools. This ranking is now noted by most of the top business schools and is a useful tool for evaluation of programs and faculty output. This ranking is another indication that comparison with world universities is a must for UT Dallas.
6. Finally, Dr. Bob Helms, Dean of Erik Jonsson School of Engineering of Computer Science reported the funding trend in science and technology in the United States. One of the salient points of his presentation was that while funding in the United States for science and technology faces serious challenge, the fact that many other countries are producing far more engineers annually, tell us that the coming decades, research universities in the United States must find mechanisms to mitigate this challenge.
   

There were extensive and intense discussions regarding intellectual property. One of the highlights of the meeting was a detailed presentation by Dr. BethLynn Maxwell, a legal representative who came from the University of Texas System’s Office of General Counsel in Austin. Dr. Maxwell oversees the System’s IP policies for all fifteen components (nine comprehensive universities, for which UT Dallas is one, four health sciences universities, one medical research center known as M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center and one hospital system in Tyler).

It was interesting to note that by comparison, the University of California system with nine universities has, according to Dr. Maxwell, 76 individuals responsible for intellectual property issues. Discussions which follow Dr. Maxwell’s presentation were candid and intense between and among the members and Dr. Maxwell. The discussions centered on the comparison of UT System’s IP rules and that of University of California System and MIT. The interchange of ideas between RAB members, especially those from industry, and Dr. Maxwell has inspired me to organize a workshop on this issue in the near future.

“Nonlinear Growth and Name Branding”

“Nonlinear growth” received a great deal of attention throughout the meeting. The technical talks by Professor Emily Tobey on brain science, Professor Bruce Gnade on the new material science and engineering program and Professor Duncan MacFarland’s exposition about a new biomedical engineering department are all important components of this nonlinear growth. From the many emails I received since the meeting, I sensed that many RAB members are now putting on their thinking caps on to assist the university in devising such a roadmap.

For any organization, albeit academic or business, name branding is critical. For UT Dallas, a relatively young university, this is even more important. While it is true that UT Dallas is science, technology and management based, so are many other universities. Hence, what makes UT Dallas unique. From the issues we discussed throughout the day, what thread could we pull out from the scramble to “brand” the university. This is indeed a challenge for UT Dallas in the coming decade.

Epilogue

One of the board members told me several meetings ago that success of RAB meetings is measured by whether or not members leave the meeting “intellectually breathless.” I sense that this RAB meeting has indeed achieved this goal!

 

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