CHAPTER 5: Accomplishment of Purposes

Scholarship and Creative Work

Background

As a major research university, CU-Boulder has a strong commitment to high-quality scholarship and its integration into the overall graduate and undergraduate programs. The effectiveness of the scholarship mission is demonstrated through external feedback, significance of research results, matriculation of graduate students, and funding trends.

Recognition of Excellence

Many Boulder campus departments have been recognized nationally for their strengths in scholarship through federal and foundation funding of research programs, national and international awards to their faculty, memberships in the National Academies of Science and Engineering, and fellows of professional societies. For example, during the past decade, Professor Thomas Cech of chemistry and biochemistry received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on RNA. In 1997, JILA physics professors Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell received the King Faisal International Prize in Science in recognition of their 1995 creation of a new state of matter called the Bose-Einstein Condensate.

Scholarship productivity also is measured by the number and quality of publications, books, patents, creative works, and other materials produced by faculty. This productivity is measured each year as part of the Faculty Report of Professional Activity (FRPA) and is recognized in the annual merit evaluation of each faculty member. For more information, see the web site at: www.colorado.edu/AcademicAffairs/
Forms/frpa/frpa.html.

In 1996-97, a record 118 invention disclosures were submitted by CU-Boulder personnel, starting a process that eventually will bring the discoveries to market. From 1995 through 1997, CU-Boulder faculty authored a yearly average of 400 articles and monographs cited in the Social Science Citation Index, 1,700 cited in the Science Citation Index, and 170 cited in the Arts and Humanities Index. Articles with CU-Boulder authors comprised one of every 360 articles in the SSCI, one of every 530 in SCI, and one of every 690 in the AHCI.

As an example of scholarly achievement on campus, two recent studies indicate that CU-Boulder’s law faculty is among the most productive and influential in the nation. A study by James Lindgren and Daniel Seltzer ranked the CU law faculty fifth in the nation in overall productivity and three CU law professors among the 20 most productive legal scholars in the country. A study of legal citations ranks the CU School of Law in the top 20 of 175 law schools.

Based on a sample of 1997 FRPA data:

• Overall, faculty members published an average of 3.25 refereed journal articles in 1997. In addition, one faculty member in four published a book—either refereed, non-refereed, textbook, or edited volume.

• Faculty also made, on average, 3.25 professional presentations during the year, either at professional conferences or in other forums or colloquia.

• Faculty also created .6 creative works on average over the entire pool of faculty. Since only about 10 percent of the reporting pool included faculty members from departments where such activity is the norm (film studies, fine arts, music, theatre and dance, and the writing program), this campuswide average can be extrapolated to an average of about six creative works per faculty member in the appropriate areas.

CU-Boulder Discoveries Brought to Marketplace

Since 1990, research advances by CU-Boulder faculty and students have resulted in 13 new entrepreneurial ventures in such fields as liquid crystal displays, satellite-based telecommuncations, RNA pharmaceuticals, industrial/medical x-rays, and optical systems.

Interdisciplinary Emphasis

Beyond the traditional college and departmental structure, CU-Boulder has developed a system of institutes that promote a dynamic interdisciplinary environment for research and teaching. These institutes, which account for nearly 50 percent of the total research dollars on the campus, include: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES); Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG); Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS); Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS); Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR); JILA (formerly Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics); and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

In addition, a number of interdisciplinary research centers have been established within departments. The engaging research and creative work environment of these interdisciplinary institutes and centers has stimulated many research collaborations with federal laboratories located in the Boulder area, such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), and NOAA's Environmental Research Laboratories.

As a result of this interaction, a large number of research staff (research assistants and professional research associates) are employed in the departments and institutes, providing additional teaching and mentoring support for students. Providing appropriate career recognition and advancement for these employees is an area of concern, because there is not an adequate set of position titles within the university. Several institutes are addressing this issue by generating their own internal career tracks.

Graduate and undergraduate students gain invaluable learning experiences in departmental/institute research programs, adding an applied dimension to their academic studies. For example, life science experiments by CU-Boulder students have flown on 12 space shuttle missions as part of the BioServe Space Technologies program, a joint venture between NASA, CU-Boulder, and Kansas State University. BioServe works with industries to facilitate the commercial use of the unique environment of space.

As another example, the graduate-level Interdisciplinary Program in Telecommunications ensures that students gain an understanding of the latest aspects of technology as well as social, political, and business applications in the expanding field of telecommunications. The program offers a master of engineering or master of science degree to students from a wide variety of undergraduate backgrounds.

Opportunities for enhanced participation of underrepresented groups in scholarship activities have been increased through the SMART program, a summer program that provides research experiences for underrepresented undergraduate students from across the nation. In addition, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) offers expanded options for research activities by undergraduates.

Two CU-Boulder centers—the Center for Humanities and the Arts and the Center of the American West—illustrate the contributions of organized interdisciplinary units to the campus learning environment. The Center for Humanities and the Arts was created in 1997 to support the role of the humanities and arts in an excellent educational experience. The center creates venues for exploring new approaches to research and teaching, provides fellowships for students, fosters opportunities for interdisciplinary exchanges, and seeks out resources to support the humanities and arts. In 1999-2000, the center brought in external funding to develop a post-doctoral program and an internship program in the humanities and creative arts.

Founded in 1989, the Center of the American West uses the resources of the university to explore, debate, and celebrate the distinctive qualities of the West. The center works to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas in a critical dialogue about the West. By uniting the insights of the humanities, the physical sciences, and the social sciences, the center helps inform Westerners about public policy and options for shaping a desirable future for Western communities. A certificate program offered by the center provides a unique regional studies curriculum in a multidisciplinary format. The program allows students to explore Western issues, ranging from the region’s flora and fauna to its history and literature. The center also sponsors conferences, community and children’s programs, distinguished visitors, and recognition awards, all with Western themes.

College of Music Entertains the Region

With more than 400 public concerts each year, the College of Music is a primary venue for musical entertainment along the Front Range. In addition to presenting faculty and student recitals, the college features its own symphony orchestra, bands, and choirs in regular concerts. Smaller performing groups include the Jazz Ensemble and the Early Music Ensemble.

Research Accomplishments

Research at CU-Boulder can be characterized by its multidisciplinary approach and by the quality of its outcomes. Major themes of campus scholarship over the past decade illustrate the university’s interdisciplinary focus: studies of states of matter, including new nonlinear optical techniques and quantum gases; studies of the environment, including biology, physics, chemistry, law, economics, and political science; studies of globalization, including economics, political science, international affairs, and history; studies of the West, including creative writing, history, fine arts, and law; human behavior (violence, alcoholism, and teen crime), including psychology, biology, and sociology.

Outcomes of Boulder campus scholarship have received attention in both popular and professional media. In addition to examples provided in Chapter I, highlights of campus research during the past 10 years include the following:

• A 1990 study by CU geneticists revealed that chemically mutating a gene in roundworms extended their average life span. This finding marked the first time researchers had shown that altering a single gene could lead to an extended life span in an animal and indicated that aging is under direct genetic control.

• In 1993, the world’s first general-purpose optical computer was built at CU-Boulder, providing the capability of making calculations with light rather than electricity.

• Christopher Braider, professor of French and Italian, expanded understanding of the interconnections between European literature, visual art, philosophy, and science from the later Middle Ages through the Enlightenment, a theme emphasized in his 1993 book, Refiguring the Real: Picture and Modernity in Word and Image, 1400-1700.

• In 1994, a forensic analysis of nearly 200 mummified human remains from the Middle Ages in northern Sudan indicated that women were the heartier and longer-lived sex in that age, just as they are today.

• By excavating fossil bee and wasp nests from Arizona’s Petrified Forest, CU-Boulder scientists concluded in 1995 that the buzzing insects have been on Earth for more than 200 million years, much longer than widely believed.

• In her 1995 book, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs, fine arts Professor Erika Doss, an authority on American public art and popular culture, provided important insights into the link between public art (such as city statues and airport murals) and the community spirit that it may or may not represent.

• Scientists at CU-Boulder used ground-penetrating radar in 1995 to discover that the ancient village of Ceren in El Salvador—considered the best preserved prehistoric village in Latin America—contained 22 buildings still buried by volcanic ash from a volcanic eruption in A.D. 690. To date, 12 additional structures have been excavated and studied.

• In 1995, CU-Boulder engineers created a new technology to extend the depth of field in optical lenses, a development that could eliminate the need to focus camcorders and still photography cameras.

• In 1997, CU researchers showed the moon was likely formed when a rogue planet three times the mass of Mars sideswiped Earth, causing much of the crust and mantle to re-form into material that now makes up Earth’s moon.

• CU-Boulder researchers designed, built, and launched a $12 million instrument on NASA’s 1997 Cassini Mission to Saturn that will examine the planet’s atmosphere and ring system upon Cassini’s arrival in 2004.

• An orbiting satellite called SNOE, built and operated by CU-Boulder students with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, was launched in 1998 to help measure chemicals associated with ozone depletion in Earth’s atmosphere.

• In 1998, CU-Boulder faculty used ice cores to discover that a warming event 2,500 years ago that heated the Northern Hemisphere by roughly 20 degrees Fahrenheit also occurred in the Southern Hemisphere, indicating the event was global in scope.

• CU-Boulder researchers showed in 1998 that much of the energetic electron activity in Earth’s radiation belts, once thought to be generated by the sun and solar wind, actually is accelerated to light-speed by Earth’s own magnetic shell, creating periodic havoc with satellites.

• CU-Boulder researchers determined in 1998 that an orderly assembly of stones in Egypt’s Sahara Desert dating back 6,000 years was the oldest astronomical alignment of megaliths in the world.

• In 1998, Nobel laureate Thomas Cech spearheaded the discovery of the human gene for the active component of an enzyme known as telomerase, a key to the uncontrolled growth of cells.

• In 1999, CU-Boulder researchers discovered that the earliest humans who peopled Australia some 55,000 years ago may have inadvertently disrupted the continent’s food chain by burning vast areas of native vegetation, resulting in the extinction of most large animal species.

• Scholars in the American Music Research Center in CU-Boulder’s College of Music have enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the full range of American music, from classical to folk to popular. For example, center director Tom Riis explored African American musicals in his prize-winning book, Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915.

Research Support

Faculty research is supported in a number of ways. As is appropriate for a comprehensive research university, tenured and tenure-track faculty workloads are designed to allow substantial time for research. About 40 percent of a faculty member's efforts typically are devoted to her or his research or creative work program, including substantial time working with graduate students.

Financial support is provided through two faculty research committees administered by the Graduate School. Funding for research and creative work is awarded by the Council on Research and Creative Work and the Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities. They provide research and special project grants, faculty fellowships, junior faculty development awards, and conference grants on a competitive basis. The Graduate School also provides matching funds for equipment and related facilities to leverage research proposals submitted for sponsored awards.

Faculty members are eligible to apply for sabbatical leave on a seven-year cycle, in support of their research work as well as teaching activities. Sabbaticals may be taken as a semester at full pay or a year at half pay. When eligible for a sabbatical, faculty members also may apply for a competitive, full-year faculty fellowship through the Graduate School.

Language Tech Center Enhances Learning

The Anderson Language Technology Center (ALTEC) is a state-of-the-art facility supporting the study of foreign languages and cultures. A large library of materials offers audiotapes, videotapes, videodiscs, computer programs, CD-ROMs, reference books, and journals, as well as foreign language magazines.

Computing facilities at the center include an interactive video lab and a computer classroom for foreign language word processing, tutorial programs, and Internet access. ALTEC is directed by the College of Arts and Sciences and is open to the university community.

Information Technology

Information and communication technology infrastructure is essential for the success of the Boulder campus research enterprise. High-speed networks, access to computing power, and communication are necessary for effective teaching as well as research. As discussed in Chapter IV, a strategic plan for information technology has been developed and implementation has started. Under a new initiative, for example, faculty members are provided a new computer every three years to support both their research and teaching activities.

As part of the information technology access effort, a partnership has been formed by the university, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the City of Boulder to lay extensive fiber optic lines interconnecting the institutions. This partnership, called Boulder Research Administrative Network (BRAN), will give the campus a very high bandwidth communication network that will be a valuable tool for researchers, students, and administrators. Construction is well under way and completion is expected by the end of 1999.

Technology support for the research mission also is reflected in the recent establishment of the Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (ATLAS) initiative, discussed in Chapter IV. This wide-ranging initiative involving all schools and colleges is designed to integrate the use of technology into teaching and research across campus, as well as to build links between the university and the technology industry. As a major academic initiative, ATLAS is aimed at developing and sustaining excellence in teaching, research, and outreach related to information and communication technology.

Several research-oriented action items already are being implemented, such as:

• A research group has begun work on a study of the effectiveness of the use of technology in education, as a resource both for the university and K-12 communities.

• Two multidisciplinary research projects, each involving 10–15 faculty members, have begun examining the societal impacts of technology. The projects are focusing on visual culture as well as globalization, information technology, and democracy.

• Work is beginning on research in the area of effective communication and marketing strategies for the digital age through the Laboratory for New Media Strategy and Design, recently funded by the Omnicom company.

Funding Indicators

CU-Boulder faculty members have established a remarkable record of competing for federal research contracts and grants. Funding for research and creative work has increased by nearly 140 percent over the last decade, exceeding $204 million in 1999.

About 90 percent of the total externally funded research activity at CU-Boulder is federally funded research and development in science and engineering. The environmental sciences account for about 45 percent of CU-Boulder’s federal research expenditures; physical sciences 22 percent; engineering 12 percent; and life sciences 12 percent. The top four sources of federal support for research include, in order of magnitude, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The table below provides a summary of percent distribution of sponsored project awards over the last 10 years.

Currently, CU-Boulder is ranked ninth in federally funded research and development expenditures among all public universities. This ranking is especially impressive because of the comparatively small size of the campus and the size of the faculty. In fact, CU-Boulder ranks second among the nation’s public universities in research funding per tenured/tenure-track faculty member, following only the University of California at San Diego.

The presence of several federal laboratories in the Boulder area creates a unique environment that has been leveraged successfully for research and graduate education at CU-Boulder. Laboratories in the area include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Partnerships between CU-Boulder faculty and federal scientists benefit from shared expertise, resources, and facilities. A number of scientists from the federal laboratories have become actively engaged in teaching and mentoring of CU-Boulder students. Also, many students serve as interns or research assistants in these laboratories.

Federal funding of research at CU-Boulder makes a significant economic impact on the state of Colorado. It is estimated that the direct economic contribution of federal research and development to Colorado is about $1 billion. According to AAU calculations, the employment impact of CU-Boulder’s research activity translates to more than 9,100 jobs, direct and indirect, in the state of Colorado. In addition to jobs, this funding provides secondary economic benefits to the private sector and local communities and contributes to the high tech industry throughout the state.

Institutional support of research and scholarship, which is derived primarily from indirect cost recoveries from sponsored research projects, has not kept pace with the rapid growth in research activity. Currently, institutional support is provided for proposal processing, budgeting, purchasing and accounting, faculty start-up packages, graduate student support, seed funding for new initiatives, and matching funds for proposals.

Research Space

Over the last 10 years, the campus has built several new research buildings and remodeled much existing space to provide state-of-the-art facilities for research. Examples of research-oriented capital projects are highlighted in Chapter I and in Chapter III.

However, the rapid growth in research activity and interdisciplinary work has placed stresses on the availability of research space. Many projects must be moved off campus, due to lack of appropriate on-campus space. Wet laboratory space, in particular, has been difficult and expensive to build and maintain, especially in older buildings.

Journalism's New Media Center Focuses on Use of Technologies

Students and faculty in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication are exposed to emerging technologies in the communication field through the activities of the school's New Media Center. The program is part of the New Media Centers organization, a non-profit international collaborative network of more than 100 educational institutions and several companies dedicated to improving teaching and learning through the use of technologies.

Established in 1997, this center assists journalism and other faculty with publishing on the World Wide Web. The New Media Center also is involved with several outreach programs throughout Colorado. One such outreach effort is Virtual Chautauqua, a project that produces video and audio performances of more than 100 juried Colorado artists for viewing over the Web.