Final candidates to replace Andries van Dam, the University's first-ever vice president for research and a professor of computer science, should be determined by the end of the month or early March. A search committee composed of representatives from various departments will present its recommendations to President Ruth Simmons and Provost Robert Zimmer, according to Deputy Provost Vincent Tompkins, who staffed the committee.
Van Dam's decision to step down from his position in June 2006 and return full-time to teaching and research in the Department of Computer Science was announced to the faculty in November.
Tompkins said that although external applicants could be considered for the position, the search committee is first looking to fill the position from within the University. Faculty were encouraged to submit nominations of tenured professors they thought might like to be considered for the position, and those professors were then approached and asked to apply, Tompkins said.
"What the committee is focused on is finding somebody who will have the qualities to build on the major changes and im-provements that have happened over the last years since (the Office of the Vice President for Research) was set up," Tompkins said.
Leading a new postSince the creation of the vice president for research position in 2002, van Dam - a faculty member at Brown since 1965 - has been responsible, to a large extent, for guiding the University through a new focus on research opportunities that has been emphasized recently by Simmons and other top administrators.
Until 2002, the responsibilities of the vice president for research were considered under the jurisdiction of the dean of the Graduate School. Today, the Office of the Vice President for Research is independent from the Grad School, though it works in conjunction with other offices on campus that were part of the "major changes and improve-ments" Tompkins mentioned, such as Brown Technology Partnerships and the Office of Sponsored Projects, which itself maintains a staff of over 30.
"(The decision to create the position of vice president for research) really was an indication that part of (Simmons' and Zimmer's) program was to beef up both the Graduate School and research - not competing with the undergraduate experience or at the cost of it, but building up the other two legs of what you might think of as a three-legged stool," van Dam said. He noted that, contrary to popular conception among students and alums, steps taken to strengthen graduate programs and research at the University can only have "salutary effects" for undergraduates, including more courses, more space and more opportunities for research.
"We want to be a research university - we are a research university, and we want to become an even stronger research university - but always from Brown's unique perspective, which is that it's going to enhance all of the (University) community's experiences," van Dam said.
He added that increased communication with faculty has been one major improvement made since his office's creation.
"We're a service organization, and that's a lot clearer to many faculty than it used to be," van Dam said.
A new focus on researchIn the three years since the position of vice president for research was created, the senior administration has set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars to stimulate research and serve as seed funding for faculty research that will ideally lead to larger federal grants.
Close to $300,000 is handed out to the chairs of humanities and social sciences departments each year. This money is intended to be distributed in $2,000 merit-based grants to about half of the faculty members in each one of these departments, particularly because these fields are generally ineligible for federal funding.
There is also a new $400,000 research fund, from which grants of between $70,000 and $100,000 are handed out each year strictly to finance multi-disciplinary team projects. The faculty involved with these projects, after a year of work with funding from the University, "coalesce around a strong research idea that can then be submitted as a proposal to a funding agency for block grant funding, in contrast to the normal mode of funding, which is for single principle investigators," van Dam said.
For example, the National Science Foundation will typically give a grant to a single principle investigator - one professor - and one or two graduate students, van Dam said. But block grant funding "could fund half a dozen (professors), and often across institutions."
Van Dam said about $30 million of funding has come to the University in the three years since the seed funding program started.
"We see a huge return on investment by what is a large, but still in the scheme of things relatively modest investment. This is some of the best money Brown can spend, because it comes back," he said.
Gerald Diebold, a professor of chemistry, said that the new vice president for research must be dedicated to matching the funds for grants provided by other universities.
"We need bold steps to get our institution good talent in graduate programs," Diebold said. "It's one of the things that will propel us to be a recognized research institution," he added, mentioning the need for a commitment to things like keeping graduate tuition cost low in order to attract students.
