UCF is a rapidly growing and changing university. Thus we are always looking for milestones or benchmarks to measure our progress. We passed two such milestones recently: over $100 million in sponsored programs and advancement from Tier 4 to Tier 3 in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. These two milestones are indications that as we have become a Great Big University (eighth in the nation in enrollment) and we are also becoming a Great University.

We have enjoyed compounded, double-digit increases in funding in five of the last six years. This period of growth followed a five-year period during which funding averaged just $35 million. What happened?

I suggest three major factors are responsible for this change:

1. Our FY 05 funding is the result of approximately 1,000 proposals written by our faculty. This faculty is driven to achieve excellence in their disciplines and to provide their students with an exceptional educational experience. Simply put, this success is a direct result of a lot of hard work by our faculty.
   
   
2. Once funding is secured, our faculty, staff, and students work extremely hard to produce the kinds of accomplishments, best described as the creation of new knowledge, that in turn, builds the university’s reputation. As our reputation improves so does our U.S. News and World Report rating, our ability to attract better students and faculty, and the success of our faculty’s research proposals.
   
   
3. The university made major commitments to help our faculty in what is a hyper-competitive environment as they go head-to-head with the top research faculty from the nation’s top research universities. This commitment starts with our office which is dedicated to assisting the faculty in overcoming the ‘administration’ associated with contracts and grants. The university administration, starting with President Hitt, provided substantial funds for major capital equipment, matching funds to make proposals to federal agencies more competitive, and matching funds to provide incentives to our faculty to work with regional industry and to encourage those industries to invest their funds in research at UCF.

There is probably a fourth, less tangible, reason for our success. Our faculty are recruiting colleagues who will challenge them to do better. These great faculty members also challenge us as administrators to work as hard as they do and at the level of excellence that they expect of themselves.

Great faculty, accomplishing great things, draw great students to the university. Together they produce top scholarship that has IMPACT.

The most common question that I’ve received since we crossed the $100 million mark is, “When will we reach $200 million?” As Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Our current quest for a medical school is the greatest opportunity for continued growth of our sponsored programs. According to a 2002 report from the RAND Corp., 75 percent of all federal funds to universities come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and half of all NIH funds go to medical schools.

Needless to say, there are obstacles. Our rapid growth has long outstripped our infrastructure. We continue to manage (indeed progress at a rapid pace), but there is just so much that we can expect to accomplish given our chronic shortage of research space. The money that my office alone spends for rent exceeds all the funds spent on the incentives that have helped us reach the $100 million mark. Our support infrastructure needs to reflect the responsiveness and cost associated with nationally competitive programs. Indeed there is work to be done.

Thanks so much to our faculty, students, staff, and my bosses for the hard work that pushed us over the $100 million mark. Let’s keep chugging and see what happens next. Cheers! MJS

mj@mail.ucf.edu