Re: Big purge at ASU



On Sun, 7 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:

Straydog wrote:


On Sun, 7 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:

Straydog wrote:


Today's WSJ, front page.

A guy (a head of their cancer center) removed from control of his institute and 30 of his scientists let go as the axe fell. The guy had something like 25-30 years there, $1.5 mil in NIH money, another $1 mil in royalty income, well known, etc.

What triggered all this? Guess what? A new administrator came on board and "re-engineered" ASU into an even biggerer/expanderer institution. Our original hero lost a major NIH grant, plus got in a squabble with another faculty member who he said filed improper patent applications, and with the new regime on board (the new regime was quick to set up the new ASU uber alles policy, added buildings, programs, departments, brought in new people including George Poste [retired from SKF?] to head up another institute), and part of the new regime included very very aggressive moneyharvesting (as if this, now, is the only reason to live) and our original hero did not "play ball" with this. Lawsuits filed, our original hero's budget accounts all frozen, institute taken away from him (but he still has his tenured position and pay and office), and the university started the smear machine. They set up a safety violation audit and totaled up hundreds of safety violations (what a joke, where I was, we had probably 30 violations per room/lab, etc, and nothing much happened [not only that, but if you did want to do anything about it, it had to come out of direct costs of your grant, not the dean's money]). They also had an external review of the guys programs (another joke) and the guy complained because the guy who was in charge of the review was the new institute director who was under the thumb of the new big kahuna (Dr. Crow, new president of ASU), and the guy in charge of the review brought in--guess what--all of HIS old buddies who would likely nod-off on anything that the big kahuna wanted them to nod-off on (I've seen how these things work several times in my career, they can be apple-polish or they can be the hatchet men).

And, they had a bar graph to show recent NIH budgets falling flat or headed down slightly for the last couple years; really bad news for guys at the bottom of the "hot topics" (read: funded) pool. And, the article said that applications are up yet more, and funding success rates down even more.

And, so here it is, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the "new world order" (yes, they used that term in the article to describe the new ASU pres philosophy) is _moneyharvesting_ and also the latest buzzwords, buzzthink, and buzzprograms.

And, I can talk about how a lot of this began some ten years ago at UMAB. They did the same thing with Bob Gallo: made a whole building, gave it to him with a small budget, and told him to fill it up with grant-swinging science stars (should really be called fundraiser stars, not science stars). And, oh yes, the guy that came to ASU was previously at Columbia and pulled the same "magic wand" (big growth, increase size, increase budgets, increase institutes, make big castles in the sky and even alliances between the castles [the uberbureaucratization of the multiversity]) and so, its the old game: BoR sees something neato,
then they gotta have the latest fad, too. Ten years ago I gave an invited seminar at Mt. Saini SoM, NYC, and they showed me a "research tower" being built accross the street. 25 stories or something like that, fill them up with MDs and PhDs writing grant proposals. And, how many careers are going on the rocks in the process? The article mentioned the same thing going on at Pitt. Big shift into grant swinging. Name of the game!


Things have always been screwed up in the biological sciences/med schools and that is primarily because if NIH money and the fact that people are will to take jobs under these conditions. You won't find an engineer dumb enough to take a faculty job without a 9 month guaranteed salary, but plenty of bio-types would jump at the chance to get paid for 3 out of 12 months.


Can you answer a few questions for me?
1. At how many higher tier institutions (say the better ranked public and private, and that means research, not teaching) with engineering departments are you familiar with the "guarantees" for salary?
2. For all those who get tenure, are those full 9 month hard money salaries guaranteed 100% regardless of whether they are bringing in any grant-contract money?

That is the standard in ChE. I know faculty at Princeton, MIT, Cornell, Michigan, Minnesota, etc. and that's the way it works everywhere. Tenured faculty have a 9 month guaranteed salary on hard money. The only salary money you need to come up with is the 3 months in the summer. I know of some tenured faculty at these places that haven't written a paper in 5+ years, let alone get a grant funded and they are still getting a paycheck. I'm sorry I don't have concrete numbers, just anecdotal evidence from my colleges at various universities. I have not heard of anyone in ChE who had to come up with their academic year salary out of their own grants.

Well, that's a good deal, then. But, then,

3. What are the formulas that trade-off teaching load vs. extramural funding (yeah, I'd pick full time teaching for security, too, but the prestige ain't there, either, and the fundraisers often got better raises and promotions, too).

I don't know what the formulas are at the top 10 type places, but these guys are generally teaching 1-2 classes per year. Usually just one if they are research active. Those of us who are not at elite universities are all teaching 3 courses per year.

OK, but you didn't respond to the situations I outlined below: that there are a lot of research-only faculty, too, and I'm sure they dont' get tenure and they are always or almost always on soft money.

And, there are places where there is a formula where teaching load varies with grant activity and back again.

===== no change to below, included for reference and context =====


As one reference point I knew about, when I was an undergraduate physics major (Urbana-Champaign) in the mid '60s, all of my friends were EE undergrads and we all were often "bumming around" in the EE departments labs and it was common knowledge that half the department was full time
teaching (office and no lab), and the other half was on reduced or no
teaching (office and lab space) because they had DoD, Air Force, Navy,
and other military grants and contracts or maybe a commercial contract. Oh, yes, the EE building had an antenna test pattern tower and I often saw it going up and down, rotating, elevating, etc., so there were really using that facility. The Nuclear Engineering department had its own low power research reactor; funded by (at that time) AEC. I got to see Cherenkov radiation in person.

At IIT (Chicago), at that time, too, I was a part time night student, also visited their research institute skyscraper which, after being built, just
about doubled their lab space. It was all funded on soft money grants and contracts, and mostly engineering research (IIT was private), and I knew
that some department faculty had arrangements for space in the big building,
but otherwise were full time scientists (no teaching).

I also gave a seminar at Hopkins, on the main campus (not the med school), in an engineering department (the chair told me he was firing a guy who "hadn't brought in any grant money in five years," I didn't ask if he had tenure of any kind.)

So, I'd like you to tell me if the situations you know about (and how many) in the "engineering racket" are much different from the "science racket" according to the three questions I asked above.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Big purge at ASU
    ... The guy had something like 25-30 years there, $1.5 mil in NIH money, another $1 mil in royalty income, well known, etc. ... Our original hero lost a major NIH grant, plus got in a squabble with another faculty member who he said filed improper patent applications, and with the new regime on board, and part of the new regime included very very aggressive moneyharvesting and our original hero did not "play ball" with this. ... At how many higher tier institutions (say the better ranked public and private, and that means research, not teaching) with engineering departments are you familiar with the "guarantees" for salary? ... The Nuclear Engineering department had its own low power research reactor; funded by AEC. ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: Big purge at ASU
    ... The guy had something like 25-30 years there, $1.5 mil in NIH money, another $1 mil in royalty income, well known, etc. ... Our original hero lost a major NIH grant, plus got in a squabble with another faculty member who he said filed improper patent applications, and with the new regime on board, and part of the new regime included very very aggressive moneyharvesting and our original hero did not "play ball" with this. ... At how many higher tier institutions (say the better ranked public and private, and that means research, not teaching) with engineering departments are you familiar with the "guarantees" for salary? ... The Nuclear Engineering department had its own low power research reactor; funded by AEC. ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: One of my most brilliant posts, If I say so myself.. Protest. Expose the insanity
    ... I'm convinced that the changes that took place while I was teaching are irreversible unless something drastic happens. ... The key issue is how is a faculty paycheck financed. ... The key mechanisms for this is hard money vs soft money. ... Better yet is that since many universities are public institutions, the taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for what the corporations want done. ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: One of my most brilliant posts, If I say so myself.. Protest. Expose the insanity
    ... teaching is the absolute farthest thing from the minds of the ... The key issue is how is a faculty paycheck financed. ... The key mechanisms for this is hard money vs soft money. ... formost real concern among science faculty at a research university is the stability of their funding and the second concern would be backstabing politics by chairs/deans/directors of the institutions. ...
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  • Re: Publishing Papers
    ... Research equipment certainly wasn't ever from indirect costs, ... Another thing you may not be aware of is that back around the '70s, a grant went to a PI, and the PI got title to all the instruments bought on that grant. ... its all about ownership and the manager/administrators really hated it when a departing faculty could give the admininstration the finger. ... They can juggle the books and squeeze money out of their faculties. ...
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