Past Olscamp award winners discuss future of BGSU research

Competing for research funding increasingly requires faculty to collaborate with others, and to be creative in where they seek the support.

Addressing that climate, and looking to the future, at last week’s BGSU Research Conference was a panel of former Olscamp Research Award winners.

Joining them was Heinz Bulmahn, Graduate College dean and vice provost for research, who said that with state universities under scrutiny to be more effective and efficient, BGSU must form alliances with the Bowling Green and northwest Ohio communities, and with the region’s colleges and universities.

Interaction with the larger community is a shared responsibility, “and research is a vehicle for doing that,” he said.

Panel moderator Fred Miller, philosophy, and panel member Burton Beerman, music composition, each noted the challenge of interdepartmental communication within the University, as well as the need for interdisciplinary research.

They and their colleagues on the panel—Peggy Giordano, sociology, and Kenneth Kiple, history—were “amazed” they didn’t all know each other previously, said Beerman, director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music on campus. The four faculty members are all in their 30th year or more at BGSU.

“The tendency is to want to do everything yourself,” added Beerman about research. Investigators tend to do specialized research, and in a specialized world, but to compete for funding now, they have to work with other people, he said.

“The cutting-edge work has to be of interdisciplinary character,” agreed Miller, executive director of the University’s Social Philosophy and Policy Center. He pointed out the change in his field over the years, saying that current graduate students in philosophy may focus on a particular area, such as envi`ronmental or medical ethics, that requires them to take courses in biology and other disciplines.
Support of administration is needed at all levels to plan interdisciplinary research, said Giordano, a Distinguished Research Professor. “The top sets the tone,” she said, adding that she believes the current administration is doing a good job in that regard. At the same time, she continued, it needs to support research efforts financially and otherwise, such as allowing release time for faculty to respond to requests for proposals.

“We’re poised right now at an extraordinary moment in Bowling Green’s history where we’re actually a better university than we think we are,” according to Giordano, praising newer faculty in particular and urging that they be allowed to stay and flourish here.

While acknowledging that more grant money is awarded for collaborative projects, Kiple said he’s not sure it should be. “Historians mostly like to work alone,” said the Distinguished University Professor, calling the competition for funding in history “a contact sport.”

The federal government is about the only place to go for historians who need significant support, although with numerous small grants available, they can be creative if they have a promising project, he said.

BGSU researchers must be creative about tapping different sources of potential funding, but they can also be successful in traditional areas, Giordano noted. “Somebody’s going to get that money, why not somebody from Bowling Green?” she asked.

Unlike the sciences, the arts can’t turn to the government for money, so the alternative is the private sector, said Beerman.

Bulmahn suggested that faculty tap into that corporate environment, although businesses generally support only specific projects that will yield quick results. But researchers also have to compete for dollars at the federal level, because “that’s where the money is,” he said.

Support may be available, too, from the University, for which inquiry is a key element of its Academic Plan, he pointed out. But the “real issue,” he said, is the declining share of BGSU’s revenue from the state, and the increasing need for that money to be designated for instruction.

Young faculty must realize that attaining prominence requires research and exploring all possibilities for pockets of money to fund it, Bulmahn said.

Discussion of interdisciplinary collaboration and communication was among the motivations for the research conference, which allows faculty to see each other’s work and become acquainted, he added.

Now, the conference co-sponsors—the Graduate College and the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research—are planning a database that could be accessed for information about research at the University, said Deanne Snavely, chemistry and associate Graduate College dean. The plan is not without challenges—she noted data entry and keeping the information current, for example—but the University must find a way to better catalog its faculty’s scholarly work, Bulmahn said.