Chapter 4 - Academic Goals and Strategies to Build Distinction
Provide initial support for programs, institutes, and centers that advance university strategic priorities
Over the last decade, the University has institutionalized its ability to provide seed support to start programs, institutes, and centers that deepen our commitment to cross-school partnerships and advance interdisciplinarity. Duke's flexibility to enable faculty to develop such programs plays an important part in the recruitment and retention of our best faculty and to the ability of our students - both graduate and undergraduate - to gain first hand experiences in cutting edge research.
To ensure our continued capacity to support the creative energies of our faculty in the creation of future signature programs, institutes, and centers, we will develop and implement mechanisms by which the schools will assume the support of successful centers after initial central funding. The Provost's Common Fund and new strategic Faculty Enhancement Initiative funds will provide sources of seed support for faculty groups interested in developing new programs, institutes, and centers. The Provost's office will evaluate proposals for new programs, institutes, and centers, in consultation with the Deans, Institute Directors, and Academic Programs Committee, based upon how the proposed program, institute, or center builds on demonstrated leadership and enhances the intersections between school priorities and the signature university themes. The number of programs, institutes, or centers started annually will vary based on the availability of support and commitments to ongoing efforts, will, in general, be supported for an initial four year period, assessed during their third year, and, if successful, renewed contingent on the development of a walk-down model from central to school support.
Facilitate cutting-edge research through support of shared facilities
The equipment and facilities needed to perform research often exceed what an individual faculty member can acquire, sustain, or optimally utilize. This predicament has been largely limited to science and engineering; it is reflected by such facilities as our Shared Materials Instrumentation Faculty, the NMR Center, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, the Interdisciplinary Initiative in Social Psychology Experimental Labs, and the Shared Cluster Computing Resource. Today, however, as the Franklin Center's Technology Center makes clear, sophisticated, technology-intensive facilities are needed in all disciplines for faculty research and scholarship. The creation and development of shared resources is often difficult because of faculty preferences for dedicated facilities, the hesitancy of schools to subsidize one another, and the lack of current financial mechanisms to provide an infrastructure for shared resource partnerships. Through the Faculty Enhancement Initiative, however, the central administration will seek to provide leadership in developing the critical mass of faculty in strategic areas needed to justify and sustain targeted core facilities, whether high end instrumentation for science and engineering or multi-media visualization and digitization facilities for the arts and humanities. We will also work to provide increased resources for critical, shared facilities, although faculty startup funds available through this initiative can be used towards the purchase of shared instrumentation, potentially leveraging both school and external funding.
Future demand for shared resources is likely to increase, with near-term needs in science and engineering accentuated by current climate of federal funding. The university cannot support all requests for shared facilities but will need to prioritize support activities that bring distinction to our core values and strategic goals. To make such determinations, we will establish a Shared Facilities Oversight Committee, reporting to the Vice Provost for Research, to define the process by which faculty can create shared facilities, prioritize requests for such facilities, recommend the appropriate initial investment, and evaluate proposed business plans to assure long-term viability.
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