At the risk of rehearsing the obvious, let me mention again the synergy between strong teaching and effective research. We should be mindful that a relatively small number of institutions—perhaps 150 of the nation's 3,400 universities, colleges, and community colleges—conduct most of the research that becomes the knowledge base for teaching. These are mostly large institutions with strong graduate and professional schools, research facilities, and major libraries. As a member of this community of research universities, Temple contributes significantly to teaching well beyond its own campus.

At Temple, the presence of faculty vigorously engaged in research creates special learning opportunities for students who wish to undertake research or investigations of their own, or write senior theses, or undertake research tutorials. There are also latent impacts of a research faculty on the teaching process: when students learn from citations in texts or journals that their own professors are engaged in developing new knowledge, their attitudes about the importance of intellectual endeavor and about their teachers change in significant ways. There certainly can be no doubt that graduate programs that award research degrees, especially those that award Ph.D.s, cannot appropriately train students unless the faculty are productive research scholars.

We must also be aware of the instrumental benefits derived from vigorous research programs: funding agencies provide allocations for equipment, laboratory renewal, research staff, and library collections. These resources benefit undergraduate and graduate students beyond those directly engaged in funded research projects. And foundations, state and federal governments, and others may be influenced in making grants or allocations by the strength of a university's research programs. Just such a discussion took place in the Pennsylvania General Assembly this year with respect to the allocation of tobacco settlement revenues.

There are a number of measures of research effectiveness that we should steadily review. The National Science Foundation annually publishes rank-order lists of American universities by their total research expenditures and their federally funded research expenditures. Unfortunately, Temple has gradually lost ground on both of these measures over the past two decades. In 1998—the last year for which NSF data are available—Temple ranked 117th in total research expenditures; in 1980 we ranked 94th. In federally funded research expenditures, Temple ranked 121st in 1998 compared to 84th in 1980. On both rankings, therefore, Temple has slipped from the prestigious list of the nation's top 100 research institutions. Indeed, in only three academic fields does Temple rank in the top 100 universities in total research expenditures. It should be noted also that Temple's research performance on these measures is significantly weaker than comparable urban universities: The University of Pittsburgh, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Wayne State University, and Virginia Commonwealth University—a plausible urban university comparison group—all rank well ahead of Temple in total research expenditures.

Although the available data reflect some erosion of Temple's standing as a research institution, there is also evidence that during the past two or three years there has been an aggressive effort to rebuild the University's external funding. A number of substantial grants have been obtained, and some research groups have been recruited that have governmental, business, or foundation funding support. The full impact of these efforts will not be known until the NSF data for the most recent years are published. 

On other measures, Temple also appears to have achieved less in research than its overall strength and national stature would suggest. The National Research Council (NRC) periodically evaluates doctoral programs in the humanities, social sciences, and laboratory sciences. In the last NRC evaluation in 1995 (using 1993 data), only three of 21 Temple doctoral programs that were evaluated ranked among the top 50 percent of such programs in the United States. Because these rankings give very heavy weight to faculty reputation and to research citations, they tend to give undue advantage to institutions with large faculties and to institutions that train large numbers of doctoral students who take faculty appointments in research institutions. So while we would not expect Temple's programs to be among the most highly ranked institutions, we ought to have some concern about our relatively modest standing in so many fields. The NRC is just beginning a new evaluation of the nation's doctoral programs, but there is little reason to believe that Temple's rankings will be significantly higher than they were in the mid-1990s.

Not all evaluations of Temple as a research university are gloomy. A variety of popular journalistic rankings give high marks to Temple's programs in art, music, education, film, theater, physical therapy, speech pathology, and law. The bases for these rankings are controversial, however. Reviews of research and graduate programs in academic journals also periodically show strength in Temple's programs. To assure that we are properly evaluating and recognizing the research enterprise at Temple, it would be helpful to identify a specific set of these measures that reliably reflect research strength and to consistently use those measures to broaden our understanding of research attainment at Temple. 

In the fall, 2000, I asked Garrett Heberlein to undertake a review of our research programs. Dr. Heberlein served for more than a decade as Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Wayne State University, an urban university with similarities to Temple, during a period when that institution's volume of funded research and national research rankings rose impressively. Dr. Heberlein's comprehensive report has recently been received. He has discussed his findings with the Council of Deans and a large number of research faculty. We will not find all of Dr. Heberlein's prescriptions suitable for Temple, but his report gives us a persuasive blueprint for reconstructing research at Temple.

Overall, we cannot be sanguine about the research enterprise at Temple. For the next few years, Temple will need to give intensive attention and make substantial investment in research. Among the steps we should consider are the following:

• Many universities have a vice president for research, who is often also the dean of the graduate school, to give focus and emphasis to the institution's research program and to tightly draw the connection between graduate programs and the research enterprise. This officer typically has a pool of resources to invest in research initiatives and has broad responsibilities for evaluating faculty appointments and the credentials of graduate faculty. The vice president for research and dean of the graduate school can focus entirely on several aspects of the research program: identifying funding sources, building relationships with funding agencies, assisting faculty to develop grant proposals, improving research facilities, evaluating research degree programs, and reviewing the credentials of graduate faculty who supervise research degree candidates.

• Substantial start-up funds should be invested in promising research initiatives that have strong prospects of obtaining external funding.

• It will be necessary to invest substantial funds in the renovation of laboratories and other research facilities. Many have become obsolete over the years. This will be a gradual and expensive process. In the short-term, while these improvements are under way, it will be necessary to reallocate existing research space by asking faculty members who do not have active research programs to transfer their research labs to colleagues who are funded or have strong funding prospects.

• Similarly, there will be a need for substantial investments in modern research equipment. Over time, as the University's funded research program expands, a substantial share of the cost of equipment will be included in re search grant proposals.

• The University should give much closer attention to the start-up needs of new faculty, so that they can build vigorous research programs early in their careers and become eligible for external research support.

• Although it will be painful, Temple should go through the process of identifying a small number of its strongest research-oriented graduate programs for additional investment, so that these programs can substantially improve their national rankings. As the first group of programs become stronger, additional programs that have developed strength should be targeted for investment. Each cycle of investment may take four to five years, so this is a slow, but painful, process to gradually build Temple's research programs.

• Programs should be conducted for faculty who seek to improve their skills in identifying funding sources and writing grant or fellowship proposals.

• The University ought to review whether it has sufficient support for developing grant-eligible proposals, such as epidemiologists, statisticians, and specialists in survey research and demographic data. What structure could be created that would provide the most effective service to faculty who need these services? And should the service array provided by the University include assistance in writing grants?

• There is naturally a concern by scholars in fields where available external funding is slight, such as many fields in the humanities and arts and some fields in the social sciences. Here we must be sure that we have not too quickly concluded that funds are not available. There are some opportunities in these fields for applied research and training grants that, with careful planning, may include research components. The University should also develop a policy that encourages faculty in these areas to apply for fellowships by cushioning the financial difference between university compensation and fellowship stipends. Finally, there is a promising effort in the College of Liberal Arts to obtain an endowment grant that, with matching funds, could provide substantial support for research. The University may also attempt to create a modest pool of funds to support research in these fields, but that is more likely to be feasible when overall research funding is stronger.

• At least one other area of research endeavor could be strengthened at Temple. This is research on urban and metropolitan issues. There is already some work of this kind under way in the University. However, a comparison of Temple's funding from state and local governments with such funding in other urban universities suggests that there is room for Temple to further develop its urban research agenda. An impressive effort of this kind is the recently announced federal grant to Ambler College for its research on sustainable communities. Urban research funding is often for applied studies. These are valuable in their own right and are consistent with Temple's urban mission. The findings are often publishable in journals that emphasize urban or applied studies or as books. Applied studies also lay the groundwork for more theoreti cal and pure research by providing data bases and concept development. Temple also has many funded programs to provide service to groups within the community. A preliminary review suggests that few of the programs yield applied research reports that would be helpful in strengthening both service programs themselves and public policy. An important question is whether Temple should follow the lead of many other urban universities by creating a structure that focuses on urban research and teaching endeavors.

• Finally, if Temple is serious about its mission as a research university, its recruitment of faculty and its faculty personnel policies must consistently give significant weight to research performance of faculty.