FSU hires 15 researchers for new initiatives

FSU hires 15 researchers for new initiatives

"Yan-Yan Hu and Justin Kennemur are two of the newest members of Florida State University’s chemistry department.
Hu and Kennemur are part of another team as well. They were hired earlier this year to join FSU’s burgeoning energy and materials group, an interdisciplinary effort that FSU administrators hope will help elevate the university’s national profile.
Hu and Kennemur are just two of eight new hires focused on energy and materials, and they are part of a group of 15 new faculty members who FSU has brought in using the $20 million in preeminence funding it received this year from the Legislature. The other seven new researchers, some coming from MIT and Ivy League schools, will be working on the new brain health and disease initiative or at the coastal and marine research program.
“We’re trying to grow research around here,” Gary Ostrander, FSU’s vice president for research, said. “We have launched these initiatives and really got an outstanding pool of people coming in here. They will teach undergraduates too. It’s a win-win all around.”
Ostrander expects the new researchers to quickly engage in technology transfers. He envisions start-up companies emerging from their work.
“It’s an exciting time in Tallahassee right now,” he said.
FSU is in the process of building a new $50 million research facility in Innovation Park that likely will be home to some of the new researchers, Ostrander said.
The new hires represent roughly $1.5 million in salaries and an additional $8 million in start-up laboratories, Ostrander added.
“The whole point is to get people who are going to partner and collaborate with one another and get some synergy together,” he said. “It’s really been getting people who will build on and complement our existing strengths.”
The Legislature established preeminent universities in 2013. Only FSU and University of Florida qualified, and they have each received $35 million in additional funding over the past two years.
“Using our existing infrastructure, collaborative culture and strategic research vision, we were able to attract a truly outstanding class of scientists to help lead innovation in these key research areas,” interim Provost Sally McRorie said in a release. “I have no doubt that their knowledge, expertise and unbridled curiosity, combined with FSU’s support, will lead to some amazing discoveries in the decades ahead.”
The new hires are also giving morale a boost in individual departments. Chemistry chair Tim Logan said his department has grown by almost 10 percent during the past two years. He now has 39 tenured or tenure-track faculty.
“It’s a very exciting time for us,” Logan said. “It helps us expand on an already strong group.”
Logan came to FSU 20 years ago when the university created a structural biology unit that combined researchers from chemistry and biology. It was, he said, a model for some of the new initiatives being launched on campus.
“It’s always good for morale when you’re hiring a group like this,” Logan said. “The faculty that’s here, they’re seeing who’s coming in and they say, ‘I know that guy. I’ve read his papers.’ It not only energizes the faculty who are here, it makes it easier to attract outstanding faculty members.”



Re: FSU hires 15 researchers with preeminence funding

pauldurac

10/7/2014

"In other words, to date FSU has used less than 10% of the recurring money it has been appropriated by the legislature to hire the kind of STEM faculty that are likely to have research funding.  I think that these are all solid research hires, but a $1.5 million recurring hiring budget for bringing in top STEM faculty is a trivial investment for any university with AAU ambitions.  We certainly are investing in or hiring STEM faculty at the level of other research universities in our state or region, even with preeminence money. 

One concern is the small number of faculty.  But an equally important concern for me is seniority.  The two hires highlighted in this article, like almost every one of FSU's other recent STEM hires, are assistant professors.  It will take them a decade or longer to produce at the level of the 36+ STEM hires UF has made in the past year -- assuming that those faculty even stay at FSU (we can probably expect about 30% of them to stay, and are certain to lose some of the best performers to other universities).  We badly need to hire senior faculty, especially as we grow and expand into new areas -- and we need to do this even if these faculty make significantly more money than existing faculty on campus.

I will say it again:  If FSU has serious ambitions as a research university we need to significantly step up the scope and intensity of our hiring in STEM fields, and commit ourselves to hiring faculty at all levels of seniority.  We have the resources to build a world class engineering program if we want to, or to develop new research specialties, niches and programs in STEM areas. 

We really have to decide what kind of university we want to become -- I hope we can redouble our efforts and investments directed to hiring in STEM.  Hiring 15 faculty (mostly assistant professors) in the same year UF has hired more 36+ senior faculty with same amount of state resources says something about the return on investment the legislature can expect from FSU and we need to show better outcomes if we want to expect similar investments to continue into the future.  To do this the university needs to commit itself to at least a $25-50 million *annual* startup budget and to hiring 25-40 faculty a year over the next decade.  We also need to recruit and hire senior level faculty -- which takes twice as much work and commitment on the part of the university as hiring assistant professors; for example, if FSU pursuing any initiatives like the superconductivity group we brought in from Wisconsin a few years ago?  We can and have the resources to do this is we want to.  As I understand it, UF has made more than twice the commitment as FSU to use its preeminence money to hire STEM faculty so I hope we see Thrasher make a step forward in this direction for FSU too -- whether or not he gets "new" state funding.

To date, for me nothing about the preeminence funding has reinforced for me the idea that FSU is committed to focusing and making an investment in hiring in STEM fields.  We have not seen any indication that the university is hiring significantly more STEM faculty this year than it would have hired without preeminence funding, or that we are hiring more faculty in these fields than universities like Georgia, Alabama or even UCF and USF.  Apart from a small increase in willingness to look at startup packages and to build some new labs, we have seen little commitment to hiring established senior faculty by FSU's administration.  The hiring of new faculty is always some reason for excitement and celebration, especially in departments that can bring in new blood, but the university administration could certainly do a lot more than what it has done to date to move forward in this area and doubling or tripling the scope and intensity of what we did this year would be a good start towards doing some world-class STEM hiring at FSU. "





"I have to question the argument that we should be
investing more in senior faculty.  In my area (granted not the hard
sciences), it is the younger faculty who typically push the research
envelope which raises our profile.  The senior faculty typically
carry heavier teaching and administrative loads here."

Like I said, I think we need to think about what kind of university we want to become.  The model you describe is certainly the cheaper model for building a research university -- a model that most state universities use when they have limited resources -- but without senior and funded faculty who can lead new degree programs and research areas in STEM?  For example, our MagLab would never be where it is today had we not recruiting senior *funded* faculty to FSU like Stanley Marshall and the superconductivity group, who came here to develop entirely new fields of expertise at FSU.  We need to be doing this in other STEM areas too, including engineering. 

Unless you just want to replicate programs that already have senior faculty, you can't build world class funded programs with hiring assistant professors.  By investing 95% or more of the hiring resources in assistant professors in just 2-3 areas STEM, as FSU seems to currently be doing, we are not making any significant investment in new STEM areas.  The simple reality is that assistant professors need senior mentors to help guide them and to help them build funded programs; they need senior STEM faculty who are successful in their areas and no university I am aware of has build world class science programs on assistant professors alone. 

I am not arguing that we should make even most of the hiring senior faculty, but FSU is simply not going to be breaking out towards preeminence, even within the region, for another decades unless we make hiring *at least some* world class senior faculty a priority.  This is how UCSB landed this year's Nobel Prize winner in physics -- by establishing a lab and bringing him in as a full professor from industry, not by hiring an assistant professor who will likely leave for a stronger program with senior faculty later in his/her career.  Our senior STEM faculty group at FSU is small, is quickly aging, and is not as successful in funding in many areas as our competitors are.  The present approach is based on almost no investment in senior STEM faculty and the simple reality is that model is not going to all FSU make serious new advancements in STEM for another decade or more -- if those advancements ever occur.  For FSU to advance the administration needs to identify 2-3 NEW STEM areas, and simultaneously invest in both senior and junior faculty in those areas, not just continue hiring in assistant professors in the EXACT SAME areas we were discussing hiring in a decade or more ago.