SACSCOC Off-site Committee’s Response

Non-Compliance

As a Carnegie Research 1 institution, LSU is clearly focused on the mission of research, broadly defined, and has established a number of performance indicators related to track progress in research. These indicators include:

Impact:  measures of scholarship and creative activity as determined by national norms in individual disciplines; national awards for faculty research/creative activity; faculty memberships in national academies.

Resource:  research expenditures; research expenditures per FTE (federal and local); research funding involving more than one unit.

Learning:  PhDs and Master’s degrees awarded (total and per FTE); placement of PhDs in tenure track positions and industry; number of post-doctoral associates.

Engagement:  patents awarded, number of start-up businesses from LSU research; licensing income; number of faculty consulting engagements; number of national/international symposia organized.  

Data was not presented for all of these metrics and in some instances the data presented lacked information on national norms and/or for trends over time making this standard somewhat difficult to interpret. For example the metric LSU adopted to measure the impact of research requires that data be compared to national norms for different disciplines - such comparisons were not provided for data in Table 1 nor were there any trends over time. A similar criticism relates to the list of faculty who have achieved national recognition – how does LSU compare to its peer? Comparative information related to research funding (the resource metric listed above) as well as funding trends with time were provided, however; and this data illustrated that LSU remains solidly at the midpoint for its peers with respect to federal research funding and total research expenditures (Table 5). As for the metric related to learning, LSU appears to have been successful in producing graduates with an expertise in research based on the numbers of students completing masters and doctoral degrees (all of which require research). Tracking of placements appears to be a work in progress (a problem shared by many institutions, however). Data on postdoctoral associates was not readily apparent.

Data was provided for economic development resulting from research initiatives (engagement), with progress noted in a number of the parameters being tracked (Table 3). Comparative data on these parameters (said to be located in Table 4) was not in evidence, however; and table 4 was not readily interpretable (unclear as to whether each line reflects a different academic year and if so, whether the first or the last line is most current). The partnerships with Louisiana Business & Technology Center and with the Louisiana Industrial Park appear to be bearing fruit; and at least one college – Engineering- has benefitted directly from investments by business partners (40 companies sponsoring research projects).

The Office of Research and Economic Development (OREG) has responsibility for all research activities on campus. This entity encompasses a variety of administrative units (Sponsored Programs, Undergraduate Education, Tech Transfer, the Graduate School, etc.), a variety of Research-Related Centers & Institutes, a number of compliance units (IRB, IACUC, Radiation Safety, etc.) and a unit related to economic development (the Louisiana Business and Technology Center mentioned above). Despite budgetary constraints and a lack of stability in leadership (noted on recent program reviews), the unit appears to serve a vital role on campus and is well appreciated by the faculty. Overall, however, the section describing the various components of OREG was poorly constructed – links to supporting documentation was missing for several units and the links provided for many others were numbered incorrectly.

Concerns related to this standard are as follows: while LSU adopted reasonable metrics and provided relevant information related to these metrics, it did not appear to consistently analyze these metrics for methods to improve institutional effectiveness in research.  

LSU A&M’s Response

As the flagship institution of the state, the vision of Louisiana State University and A&M College (LSU) [1] is to be a leading, research-extensive university, challenging undergraduate and graduate students to achieve the highest levels of intellectual and personal development.  One of only 21 universities nationwide to achieve this status, LSU is designated as a land-, sea-, and space-grant institution. LSU is the only Southern Regional Education Board Four-Year I University in the state, and is one of only 73 public institutions classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a Very High Research Activity Research University (the only one in Louisiana) [2].  The mission of LSU [1] is the generation, preservation, dissemination, and application of knowledge and cultivation of the arts. 

LSU is committed to offering a broad array of undergraduate degree programs and extensive graduate research opportunities designed to attract and educate highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students; employing faculty who are excellent teacher-scholars, nationally competitive in research and creative activities, and who contribute to a world-class knowledge base that is transferable to educational, professional, cultural, and economic enterprises; and using its extensive resources to solve economic, environmental, and social challenges [2].

The vision and mission are complemented by the first goal of Flagship 2020 [3]:

“Discovery: Expand discovery through transformative research and creative activities addressing contemporary and enduring issues that shape the way we live in the world.

1. Increase nationally-recognized research and creative activities.
2. Expand interdisciplinary solutions to significant social, environmental, economic, cultural, and educational problems.
3. Increase partnerships with industry to develop intellectual property and foster commercial applications.”

Performance indicators [4] for this goal as outlined in Flagship 2020 are

Impact:  measures of scholarship and creative activity as determined by national norms in individual disciplines, national awards for faculty research/creative activity, and faculty memberships in national academies;

Resource:  research expenditures, research expenditures per FTE (federal and local), research funding involving more than one unit;

Learning:  PhDs and Master’s degrees awarded (total and per FTE), placement of PhDs in tenure track positions and industry, number of post-doctoral associates; and

Engagement:  patents awarded, number of start-up businesses from LSU research, licensing income, number of faculty consulting engagements, number of national/international symposia organized. 

The university is actively engaged in the review and assessment of many performance indicators, and implements strategies for improvement based on analysis of the results.

The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) is principally involved in efforts to increase scholarly productivity. In addition, Policy Statement (PS) 36-T Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty: Appointments, Reappointments, Promotions, Tenure, Annual Reviews, and Enhancement of Job Performance [5] describes the expectations of individual faculty members related to faculty appointments, reappointments, promotion, tenure, annual reviews, and enhancement of faculty job performance. The term “scholarship” is defined in a broad sense to signify “contributions to knowledge in the disciplines appropriate to the department, at a level of quality and significance that is competitive by national standards.” Examples of scholarship are writings, creativity, and designs, and are discipline driven. Examples of appropriate factors and evidence that may be used in judging scholarship include awards of grants or contracts, citations in research publications, published reviews by experts, recognition by national/international professional organizations, and publications by respected journals and publishing houses.

In addition to PS-36, LSU has several policy statements directly related to research and research ethics, including  PS-68 University Intellectual Property Rights in Sponsored Research Projects [6] (see CS 3.2.14: Intellectual Property Rights), PS-69 Research Misconduct [7], and PS-98 LSU Financial Conflicts of Interest in Research [8]. 

The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED)                   

The Office of Research & Economic Development (ORED) is the primary unit responsible for facilitating and providing oversight of the campus-wide research and economic development enterprise. Within this office, the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies is the executive administrator whose general responsibility is to put mechanisms in place that stimulate research activity and to assure that the ap­propriate checks for ensuring that researchers remain compliant with applicable laws and regulations governing the conduct of research are in place.

PS-50: Responsibilities and Concerns of University Personnel defines the responsibilities of the Vice Chancel­lor as follows: [9]

The Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies is the chief research officer of the university, responsi­ble for the administration, service, and promotion of research and graduate studies and for technology transfer and economic development activities. Specific duties include the following:

a. Serve as budgetary and administrative head of the Office of Research and Graduate Studies;

b. Establish and administer internal and external councils to assure the effective operation of research and graduate studies;

c. Establish appropriate administrative policies and effective procedures pertaining to the conduct of sponsored research and graduate studies at the University;

d. Encourage and assist the development of research proposals and the acquisition of research grants;

e. Interact with federal and state agencies, industry, foundations and private contacts to support fund­ing opportunities for the faculty;

f. Monitor federal and state regulations to ensure University compliance and provide oversight of federal and state sponsored projects;

g. Execute personnel actions and/or make recommendations as delegated concerning employees as­signed to the jurisdiction of the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

The Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies is administratively supported by an executive leadership team composed of a Senior Associate Vice Chancellor and an Associate Vice Chancellor. ORED has a large number of units under its purview, including administrative and research support units, research-related centers and institutes, compliance units, and economic development units [10]. The Graduate School, the Office of Undergraduate Research, the Office of Sponsored Programs, the Office of Intellectual Property, Commercialization and Development, and the Louisiana Business and Technology center and Innovation Park report directly to the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies. All research centers and institutes, compliance units and communications units report to one of the Associate Vice Chancellors. The executive leadership team works with these units in the implementation of the ORED Strategic Plan [11].  Each of these units was reviewed in 2012 as required by the formal institutional program review of ORED conducted by the University Review and Assessment Council.  (The results of that review are discussed at the end of this document.) In addition, the executive leadership team meets with the relevant directors of each of the major research centers and institutes on a monthly basis to ensure each is making progress toward achieving its mission goals as it relates to the ORED Strategic Plan. 

The ongoing assessment of the university’s overall research program and its progress is largely guided by the ORED Strategic Plan that was developed in 2011 and implemented in 2012. The key component of this plan is the identification of seven focal research areas. The criteria used to identify these areas include existing funding and scholarship production patterns, potential for growth based on federal priorities, faculty depth and extent of research infrastructure, multi- inter- or trans-disciplinary research or potential for such, and relevance to state economic development priorities, culture and history. The identified focal areas include (1) Core Computing/High Performance Computing, (2) Materials Science and Engineering, (3) Conventional and Renewable Energy, (4) Coastal Sustainability and Environment, (5) Biological, Biotechnology, and Biomedical Research, (6) Communication and Expression, (7) Individual Behavior and Community Context.   Each of the priority research areas has several sub-themes or strands of research strength, and the main priority areas should be considered umbrella terms. ORED’s assessment of university-wide research activity relates to these priority research areas.

Benchmarks for Flagship 2020’s Discovery Goal

Impact:  Measures of scholarship and creative activity as determined by national norms in individual disciplines; national awards for faculty research/creativity activity; faculty memberships in national academies. 

Colleges and departments assess discipline-specific scholarship and creative activity and benchmark to disciplinary and institutional peers through their annual evaluations of faculty and departments. As part of the process for the annual review of faculty, scholarly productivity is documented at the departmental level, and then forwarded to the college level. Consonant with the guidelines set forth in the Handbook for Institutional Effectiveness, colleges aggregate indicators of scholarly activity and forward these data to the Office of Academic Affairs for assessment by the various university councils [12]. The various colleges have different expectations from their faculty with regard to discipline-specific scholarship and creative activity, along with different reporting methods.  For example, Table 1 shows how differently five colleges/schools record faculty productivity from the standpoint of publications/ presentations and the modes of scholarly output of faculty members. Modes of scholarly productivity are clearly discipline specific; for example, although very appropriate for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, poetry and stories are clearly not germane to the research/creative productivity of faculty in the College of Agriculture or the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences. However, these data, when used within colleges and departments, are extremely useful for benchmarking against national norms within disciplines. 

Similarly, in the School of Music [16], in addition to the number of publications, faculty productivity is also gauged and evaluated by performances. As Table 2 indicates, the faculty performed at 60 international venues across five continents in 2012-13. Such performance indicators are of significant value to the individual colleges, schools and departments.

As indicated above, ORED is charged with overseeing the university-wide research program. In its efforts to assess research impact, ORED examines other important metrics and uses the results of these analyses to inform strategies for improvement. For example, one metric for scholarly and creative research impact is elected membership in prestigious national organizations. Below are data comparing membership in two such organizations, (1) Fellows of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (Table 3), and (2) National Academy of Sciences (Table 4). These tables compare LSU with the Flagship 2020 peer-identified schools. LSU ranks at the top in terms of elected fellows to the AAAS, tying Iowa State with 35 members. By comparison, LSU has room for improvement in National Academy of Science member rankings. In response to the information gleaned from these data, ORED has convened a blue ribbon panel of internationally recognized LSU faculty including our National Academy of Sciences member Ward Plummer, several Boyd Professors (the most distinguished academic honorific given by the LSU System), and other highly accomplished faculty members to establish criteria for determining good candidates for nomination to these prestigious national academies [18].

Additionally, ORED regularly requests tabulations of faculty awards and recognitions from departments and colleges as a means to assess faculty impact.  A sampling of a report for 2012-13, provided below, illustrates that faculty from all colleges have received national awards, editorships, and other types of special recognition.  These data underscore the breadth of research excellence across campus [19]:

Robert Carney, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Studies, named to National Academy of Sciences’ Gulf of Mexico Program Advisory Group;

Gabriela Gonzalez, Department of Physics and Astronomy, elected spokesperson for Laser-Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration (more than 900 worldwide members);

Omowumi Iledare, Center for Energy Studies, named President-Elect of International Association for Energy Economics;

Margaret Reams and Nina Lam, Department of Environmental Sciences, Keynote Speakers at International Conference on Flood Awareness and Community Resilience;

Susanne Brenner, Rongying Jin, Marcia Newcomer, and Kenneth Schafer, named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science;

Susanne Brenner and James Oxley, named Fellows of the American Mathematical Society;

Jeffrey Blackmon, named Fellow of the American Physical Society;

Bradley Cantrell, Landscape Architecture, winner of 2013 Garden Club of America Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture;

Cara Blue Adams, Southern Review, awarded Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship;

Dennis Parker, School of Music, performance at Carnegie Hall;

James Honeycutt, Department of Communication Studies, Outstanding Scholar in Communication Theory from the Southern States Communication Association;

Katherine Kemler, College of Music and Dramatic Arts, 2013 SEC Faculty Achievement Award;

Pamela Pike, School of Music, Article of the Year by American Music Teacher;

John Finley, Department of Food Science, College of Agriculture, Harris Award for Excellence in Food Science and Technology;

Samuel Robison, LSU School of Social Work and Office of Social Service Research and Development, named Fellow of Center for Juvenile Justice Reform;

Cristina Caminita, LSU Libraries, selected as Emerging Leader by American Library Association;

Graham Bodie, Department of Communication Studies, ranked in top 1% of most prolific scholars publishing in communication journals, and 2012 Early Career Award from Interpersonal Communication Division of National Communication Association;

Ursula Emery McClure, School of Architecture, Charles E. Peterson Prize, American Institute of Architects (and others);

Arjen Boin, adjunct Professor in Public Administration Institute, Keynote Speech, OECD conference on Interagency Crisis Management;

Mary Beth Lima, Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, named Fellow of American Society of Engineering Education;

Charles D’Agnostino, Louisiana Business & Technology Center, Outstanding Leadership in Technology Award; and

Bulent Unel, Dept. of Economics, named Associate Editor of Southern Economic Journal.

Impact can also be assessed by rankings relative to peer institutions in terms of media outreach. In 2013, the Center for a Public Anthropology issued the rankings from its Faculty Media Impact project [20], which focuses on public media citations, rather than citations in academic journals. The logic is that media placements translate the impact of academic scholarly activity to the public domain, thereby feeding back into the public good. The study, based on more than 50,000 search queries that involve more than 6,000 news sources relating to 12,777 professors at 94 universities in the social science disciplines of anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology, examines the degree to which these faculty members are cited in the Google News Archive over a six year period (2006-2012). The formula for establishing rankings highlights the total average citation score of individuals within a department or school divided by the percentage of that department's or school’s public funding. Seven of LSU’s twelve peer identified institutions were ranked in this study, and LSU had the second highest ranking among this group, thirty-six places ahead of the next closest peer institution, Purdue University (see Table 5). According to this metric, the social sciences at LSU have a very significant impact via media outreach and fare well compared to their peers. ORED uses these data through its Department of Research Communications to identify social science departments that have room for improvement in their media outreach, and engages the college level Public Information Officers/communications professionals to develop communication plans, including media training for faculty, that will enhance the public impact of the scholarly work occurring at LSU via the media.

In sum, with regard to Impact performance indicators, individual departments and colleges regularly tabulate publication, presentation, and performance activity of the faculty and benchmark this productivity in terms of quality and quantity to disciplinary norms and standards. University wide, ORED tracks faculty awards and recognitions, and benchmarks against peers the election of faculty to prestigious national organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences. When possible, ORED also compares the public impact of LSU’s scholarly work against peer institutions in the social sciences via the Faculty Media Impact project conducted by the Center for a Public Anthropology. These assessments are then used to develop strategies for improvement, such as the formation of a blue ribbon panel of distinguished faculty to forward nominations to national academies, and the development of faculty media training modules to enhance the public impact of the scholarship conducted by the faculty.

Resource: Research expenditures; research expenditures per FTE (federal and local); research funding involving more than one unit.

In addition to Impact performance measures, ORED also routinely examines Resource-based performance indicators. The amount and sources of research funding are important measures of research resources. Two main sources of funding performance data are utilized by ORED, research awards and research expenditures. Table 6 below provides data on LSU’s sponsored program awards from 2008 to 2012 by source of funds (federal, state and other). LSU’s awarded funds ranged during this period from $140.1 million dollars to $156.3 million. These funds were yielded from proposals (Table 7) requesting between $368.2 and $567.3 million dollars per year (Table 8). Taken together, these three sources of trend data provide important information for ORED’s planning protocols. For example, LSU faculty submitted a record number of proposals in 2011 (Table 7, 1399), but requested substantially less money than in prior years (Table 8, $368.2 million). ORED interpreted this as a need for the faculty to focus not on submitting more proposals, but on proposals that are larger in scope. Resources were then dedicated to establishing the Office of Proposal Development within ORED, which assists faculty groups in the development and submission of large-scale federal submissions that seek to establish multimillion dollar centers of scholarly excellence at LSU.

ORED also regularly analyzes the sources of awarded funds, broken down by agency, to discern annual trends in funding by source of funds. Tables 9-11 provide these data as an illustration of the type of analytic data used to monitor the influx of new research resources to the university. With support from national sources, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (Health and Human Services), the National Endowment for the Humanities, Department of Homeland Security, NASA and many others, LSU is forging new frontiers in the focal research areas of Core Computing/High Performance Computing, Materials Science and Engineering, Conventional and Renewable Energy, Coastal Sustainability and Environment, Biological, Biotechnology, and Biomedical Research, Communication and Expression, Individual Behavior and Community Context, and many other areas. At any given time, there are more than 1,200 sponsored research projects being conducted by the 1,200 faculty and roughly 5,000 graduate students at LSU.

The data on sources of awarded funds are useful for assessing potential areas for growth in LSU’s funding portfolio. For example, as Table 9 suggests, given that conventional and renewable energy is a strategic research priority area for LSU, additional funding opportunities from the Department of Energy are feasible, with such funding currently comprising a small portion (~6% of the new Federal Awards) of our overall federal funding profile. In response to this opportunity, ORED modified its internal faculty travel grant program to offer additional funds to faculty seeking to meet with federal program officers about funding opportunities. The development of relationships between faculty and federal program officers is critical to the process of opening new funding streams, and insights yielded from the analysis of this type of data facilitate that process.

In addition to assessing research resources in terms of awards, an additional measure of actual research activity is constituted by research expenditures. Research expenditures are generally considered a more accurate gauge of actual research activity because they index ongoing expenditures related to the research process itself, whereas research awards signal anticipated research activity in the near and medium term. Table 12 provides the recent trends (FY07-08 to FY11-12) in research expenditures for LSU as reported to the National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey, which folds together the LSU A&M campus with the LSU AgCenter, Law Center, and Pennington Biomedical Research Center (i.e., the Baton Rouge campuses). Over this period, research expenditures ranged from a low of $280 million to a high of $289.9 million. These data are extremely useful for assessment and planning purposes. For example, the data indicate that in 2007-08, research expenditures from industrial sponsors composed only 3.8% of the total funding portfolio. Increasing competition for federal dollars in the ensuing years has led LSU to devote more efforts to securing funding from industrial sponsors. These efforts include such concrete mechanisms as putting a contract template in place to make it easier for industrial sponsors to engage with LSU through a number of variables, including such items as facilities and administrative costs and intellectual property ownership [21]. By 2011-12, this proportion had increased to 8.1% of the total funding portfolio.

NOTE: The narrative continues in "3.3.1.4 (Continued)."