Measuring University Performance Series (MUPS)
Issue II:2
Research Benefits
February 1, 1996
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The University of Florida series, Measuring University Performance, will continue with the issue of March 1, 1996. Future issues will take up additional topics reflecting the university's commitment to measuring university performance in quality and productivity of research, teaching, extension, and service. All of us at the University of Florida welcome comments and suggestions prompted by this series. Please write to the Office of Institutional Planning and Research, PO Box 113115, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-3115 (ufdata@aa.ufl.edu).
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Research is central to the University of Florida mission. We are a research university with a requirement to develop high quality competitive research for this state and to sustain a research base capable of addressing local, state, and national issues. The chart here shows that sponsored research expenditures are twice the general revenue and lottery money expended on research at UF. Sponsored research is money obtained competitively for research and the level of sponsored research is used as a measure of the quality of a university. 
Research is discovery; it is the exploration of the edges of knowledge to expand our understanding. Research sometimes produces an immediate benefit, such as when we invent a new variety of tomato that creates an industry in Florida. Research sometimes appears to produce no benefit at all, as the discovery of lasers appeared to almost everyone twenty-five years ago that now serves as an essential device in surgery and consumer electronics devices such as CD players. Research often produces the opportunity to expand our understanding and build the foundation so that future research can produce results. So the apparently abstract research in physics on measuring nuclear magnetic resonance led, eventually, to the production of MRI machines that help us understand and remedy a host of previously fatal or disabling medical conditions. Each generation worries that the research it supports does not appear to produce immediate benefits, but at the same time each generation of Americans enjoys enhanced lives from the research results of their parents and grandparents. This generation-skip ping legacy of research works as effectively as compound interest, but unlike the individual investment that generates compound interest we all must invest in American university research to ensure that our grandchildren will indeed live the best lives possible. Even though university research requires an act of faith, it also demands great rigor and accountability. While we do not know for sure which of our research initiatives will, in the end, cure cancer, prolong life, or decipher the mysteries of the universe, we can measure the productivity of our research enterprise. Research, while sometimes a lonely individual pursuit, requires validation by others. So that when we produce results, we must submit them to the review of the best experts in the world. Partly we do this to disseminate the results of our research, to display the product. Partly, however, we do this to submit our work to the critical review that can find errors, suggest improvements, or replicate our results. By this constant critique an d review we ensure that what is good in science, social science, and the humanities endures. Some of our products reach large audiences through books of history or literature or through the production of widely viewed art. Others of our products reach only very small audiences expert in the arcane disciplines of mathematics, philosophy, or science. The value of our work, however, does not depend on the size of the audience so much as it does on the advance it gives to our knowledge. So the mathematical formula impossible for me to understand and accessible to only a few thousand experts in the world, may well help us predict the weather and plot the path of comets and planets, or design optimally efficient shapes for automobiles. No university covers every possible area of research expertise, and at the University of Florida we focus our efforts and define our missions to provide a research substance that underlies our teaching focus. The resources for this mission come from the state dollars, and this edition of Measuring University Performance describes how we focus our resources to produce the maximum benefit from our research investments. Types of State Supported Research The State of Florida supports two major types of research. The first takes place through IFAS, the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science, as part of our mission as a Land Grant institution. IFAS pursues research with the direct purpose of enhancing the effectiveness and commercial viability of agriculture in Florida. This research involves work in laboratory and field, on issues of production, marketing, and environmental protection. The legislature funds IFAS' research mission directly and explicitly because it addresses directly the economic health of the state of Florida. This investment has, over the years, produced a substantial return to the citizens of the state by permitting the development of a wide range of Florida agricultural industries that would have been impossible without the research base of IFAS. For this reason, we evaluate the research productivity of IFAS against the funds provided from the state in terms of the enhancement of Florida agriculture achieved. By any measure IFAS is one of the state's best bargains. The second category of research takes place in all the other colleges of the university including the Health Sciences Center. This research varies from explorations at the outer edges of knowledge with not a glimmer of immediate practical benefit, as in the development of quantum theory that was necessary in order to develop lasers, to the most practical research on the strength of materials used in building roads, bridges, and schools. While the products of this research vary dramatically from the art exhibit to the specifications for concrete, we can find a variety of indexes to the productivity of the research work we do. In this second category of research, we first recognize that the teaching mission of the university requires that our faculty engage in research scholarship to maintain the currency of the expertise that underlies their instruction. This effort represent s 10% of the total faculty effort and 4% of general revenue and lottery expenditures on research at the University of Florida. Scholarship of this variety does not necessarily produce publications, and faculty who engage in the research that supports teaching do not have an obligation to publish because the product of this research appears in the enhanced quality of their teaching. 
For the rest of the research effort in this second category, however, we require publication. Publication takes many forms. It can involve an article in a journal, an exhibit in a gallery, a book for popular audiences, or the appearance of a poem in a magazine. Whatever the form, publication represents the product of the research effort, and without a product there can be no contribution to our store of knowledge. A promising idea that never sees the light of day cannot be criticized and tested and cannot contribute to the national and international conversation that moves our understanding forward. Science, for example, that remains an unexpressed idea contributes nothing to the combination of ideas, experiments, and theories out of which come the cumulative improvements in our lives. So we demand that research, to be considered research, must in a reasonable period of time produce a publication or a public expression of results that can be reviewed and understood by others. >Because research requires an investment of resources, we expect every faculty member engaged in research to seek outside sources of funds to support their research. In some fields, few sources exist for research support where in others, we find research dollars more easily available. In almost every field, our faculty compete against the best in the world to get these outside dollars, and so the amount of dollars earned serves as a rough approximation of the aggregate quality of the university's research enterprise. This is the measure used almost universally on a national scale to evaluate the research productivity of institutions. The state of Florida invests a substantial amount of state dollars into general research, and the best indicator of the university's effectiveness in using these dollars comes from the ratio of state dollars invested directly in general research to the outside dollars earned by university research. At the University of Florida we expect that in the aggregate, this ratio will reach at least 3 to 1 for non IFAS research, that is 3 outside dollars earned for every 1 state dollar invested in general research . This rough measure serves as a quick and effective reference for research productivity but it does not serve as an effective management tool inside the university. Inside the university we use more refined if less easily aggregated measures. Here we attempt to measure research by discipline, college, and field in order to benchmark our productivity to the competition. We look at NSF, NIH, and DOE grants as indicators of our competitiveness. We watch the rate of applications for new grants as an indicator of our aggressiveness in the pursuit of new dollars to support research. We review our success in developing patents and licenses to ensure that we capture the maximum return on the commercial success of our inventions in support of future research. We review the university's success in acquiring private and foundation funds for research and corporate contracts for research. Each of these sources represents a competitive opportunity and we will not succeed unless we are better than the competition. Eventually, though, people will always ask, "But what do we get for this research?" Here then is a sampler of research products that made a difference in Florida, recognizing that some of the best research in progress today will produce results like these only for our children and their children. 1960s UF research on chemical reactions of clay minerals and lime
1940s Nuclear Magnetic Resonance discovered, uses not clear
1995 UF study of ocean up and down currents, uses not clear
1980s UF computer program designs bridges facing hurricanes, tidal waves, ship impact
1942 UF IFAS developed heat tolerant tomato
1985 UF research on archaeology near St. Augustine
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