Friday, Sept. 12, 2003 | 11:21 a.m.
UNLV faculty and deans are standing behind President Carol Harter's plan to catapult the campus to national prominence, but students had mixed reactions Thursday about what it all means for them.
During Harter's annual State of the University speech this week, she called for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to become a major research institution in the coming years. By 2010 Harter wants the school to be classified as a "research extensive" university by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Reaction on campus ranged from supportive to apathetic.
"It's kind of cool, I guess, to be part of that," said Jennifer Rodriguez, 23, a nursing junior. "It will make my degree worth more."
Cherisse Lawson, 19, a freshman political science major, said the added prestige could help.
"I think that a lot of people would like to say, 'Hey, I go to UNLV,' just like you might say, 'Hey, I go to Harvard,' " Lawson said.
But several graduate students on campus Thursday had a more tepid reaction toward those goals.
"The ideas that Carol Harter has for this university sounds good, but it may not fit Las Vegas," said Janice Morton, 41, a first-year master's candidate in health physics. She said UNLV should stick to its expertise in hotel management and providing solid undergraduate education.
Aruna Abeyakoon, 30, a master's candidate in statistics, said the move could help the school.
"It's regarded as a school on the low end now," Abeyakoon said. "One thing it would do is it would bring in more resources."
Gaining national prominence in research means more money from federal sources, better classroom and lab facilities, more qualified teachers and, ultimately, better students, said Paul Ferguson, UNLV's vice president for research and graduate studies.
"The research function cuts across all the levels," Ferguson said. "Not only are we providing a better environment, we are creating a better learning experience for our student across all levels."
UNLV will focus on building up 10 research areas. The first area includes a field it is already nationally recognized for: hotel administration. Other fields include environmental research, language and literacy, social and urban issues, information technology, historical preservation, learning assessment, biomedical health, business and economic development and alternative energy.
"As the university focuses more on research, I think science and engineering will play an increasingly critical role in that effort," Eric Sandgren, dean of the College of Engineering, said. "And as the university's reputation increases, so will ours."
Sandgren said most faculty members see becoming a top research institution as a win-win situation.
"The goal of defining the university as a research university has my support and has pretty much wide support across the university," James Frye, dean of Liberal Arts, said.
"What it means is that there is more and more emphasis on quality research," Helen Neill, chairwoman of Environmental Studies, said. "I see opportunities for bringing in more graduate students not just from Las Vegas but all over. I see more opportunity, not only for getting more quality faculty but also keeping faculty."
Ferguson said in order to get to that level, several things have to happen. The university has to do a better job of attracting competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Because grants from those institutions are the most competitive in the nation, they are considered two important measures of the success of a university.
On that front UNLV has fallen behind the University of Nevada, Reno. Since Harter was hired, NIH funding dropped from $338,051 in 1995 to $218,693 in 2002. NSF funding dropped from $1.86 million in 1995 to $1.52 million in 2002.
At UNR, NIH funding in 1995 was $7.4 million and rose to $12.6 million in 2002. NSF funding had a similar upward trend at UNR, going from $3 million in 1995 to $6.5 million in 2002.
"Yes, NIH numbers need to increase," Ferguson said. "The question is: What do we need to do to get there?"
UNLV officials have already reorganized the university's research office to help researchers write better grant proposals and find the best federal grants to apply for, Ferguson said.
Overall UNLV is on an upward swing in raising federal research dollars. In 1995 the university received $14.2 million. This year the total is $45.2 million.
But if UNLV wants prominence, it is going to have to count mostly on the quality of work its researchers turn out. The rest flows from there, said Howard Jackson, chairman of the council on research policy and graduate education for the National Association of Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
"That's the way one becomes influential," Jackson said. "If you have one faculty member that produces publications that rank in the top 1 percent, that's good. But I would trade that any day for everybody in the department producing at a much more significant (but) modest rate."
Jackson said the next big step for UNLV is to hire the right faculty and support good existing faculty. That will result in talented faculty and graduates and more research dollars, he said.
While the march to prominence will be a slow, deliberate process, Harter's push to rank among universities such Arizona State and the University of California, Los Angeles, by achieving a Carnegie Foundation classification is misguided, said Alexander McCormick, senior scholar for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
"The Carnegie classification is a blunt instrument," he said. "It's not a measure of quality."
The university already has been classified by the foundation as "research intensive," one step below the highest level. The ranking is determined by a number of things, including the number of doctoral degrees conferred each year and the research that goes on at the university.
"Institutional leaders love to talk about this (classification system)," McCormick said. "There's a kind of halo effect that attaches to the category."
Harter announced her goal this week that UNLV should make the leap from "doctoral intensive" to "doctoral extensive" by 2010.
The distinction of "doctoral research extensive" is given out by Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and requires UNLV to confer 50 or more doctoral degrees a year in various fields for three consecutive years before being considered for the change.
UNLV graduated 42 people with doctoral degrees this year in 24 different fields, a significant improvement from 1995, when the university conferred just 10 doctoral degrees.
McCormick said Harter's goal may become moot since Carnegie is changing the rules of classification.
"There's a big wrinkle here," McCormick said. "We're changing the classification. There is by no means any certainty that the doctoral extensive category will continue and, even if it does, it's not certain that the specific definition will remain the same."
Lawson said that while she wants UNLV to be a great school, she also hopes school leaders will place an emphasis on serving undergraduates.
"Getting into classes here is still difficult," Lawson said. "If I were them, I would make that my No. 1 priority to change that."
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