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Annual Report
on
Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity
at the
University of Michigan
FY2001
Fawwaz T. Ulaby
Vice President for Research
Delivered to the
Regents of the University
January 17, 2002
Full-color PDF version of remarks (9 MB)
PDF version with B&W photos (3 MB)
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Report Table of Contents
- The Impact of UM Research on Society (Video Transcript)
- Summary of Research Expenditures and Awards
- Why Are We Successful?
- The ÒCostÓ of Success
Appendices of Tables and Charts
Table 1: Volume of Research Expenditures by Sponsor
Table 2: Total Research Expenditures by School, College and Other Units
Table 3: Research and Research-Related Community Service and Instructional Support Expenditures by School, College and Other Units
Table 4: Summary of Research Proposals by Sponsor Group
Table 5: Summary of Research Proposals by Unit
Table 6: Summary of Research Awards by Sponsor Group
Table 7: Summary of Research Awards by Unit
II. Summary of Research Expenditures and Awards
A. The University as a Whole
Figure 1 charts the University's total research expenditures over the previous decade. For fiscal year 2001, expenditures reached nearly $592 million, an increase of 8.5 percent over fiscal year 2000. Through the first five months of the current fiscal year, total research expenditures have reached $257 million, compared to $233 million for the same period a year earlier, representing an increase of 10.4 percent.
Figure 1
Total Research Expenditures, FY1991 Through FY2001, Plus the first five months of FY2002
The line across the bar chart shows the University's research spending in constant 1991 dollars. For the past five years, the higher education inflation index has exhibited an average annual rate of 3.1 percent, fluctuating from 1.9 percent in 1997 to 3.9 percent in 2001. Over the same period, the Federal Government's research funding to academic institutions has increased at an average rate of 6 percent per year. Relative to those figures, our research expenditures of Federal funds -- which comprise more than two-thirds of our total research spending -- grew over the past five years at an average annual rate of just under 7 percent. Furthermore, over the last two years, UM research expenditures from Federal sources is up nearly 9 percent per year. Between FY1996 and FY2001, the University of Michigan's total research expenditures increased by $150 million, or $56.6 million in constant 1991 dollars, that is, after taking inflation into account.
Figure 2 shows the distribution of expenditures for FY2001 grouped by the sources of funds. More than two-thirds of UM's research spending originates from Federal grants and contracts. The next largest segment is institutional spending Ñ the money we invest in facilities, seed funding of new areas of inquiry, and cost-sharing on certain projects. Industry sponsors funded about 6 percent of our total, with foundations, trade groups and other sources funding the remainder.
Figure 2
Total Research Expenditures By Sponsor Group, FY2001
Figure 3 shows the trend in research expenditures by all UM units from external sponsors for the last decade.
Figure 3
Total Research Expenditures from External Sources, FY1999-FY2001
New research awards are crucial to continuing the growth trends demonstrated in the previous figures. Figure 4 presents the annual value of total research awards over the past decade, from FY1991 through the first half of FY2002. Each year's total represents the sum of the full value of all awards over their entire, multi-year duration. Put another way, the funds awarded in any one year will support research activity for several years to come. A year ago I was pleased to report that new awards in support of our faculty's research for FY2000 exhibited an increase of over $200 million compared to FY1999. One concern was whether our faculty could sustain this high level of awards, since we know that there is a certain cyclic pattern to awards. Happily, our researchers have cultivated another healthy crop of new awards in fiscal year 2001 Ñ totaling $641 million. Furthermore, the first half of FY2002 shows a significant increase in the dollar value of new awards compared to the same period of FY2001. This figure provides some reassurance to me that our current high level of research spending growth should continue into the foreseeable future.
Figure 4
Research Awards, FY1991 - FY2002 (2Q)
With the big picture of research activity at the University in mind, I want to turn now to several questions. The first is "What does the funding profile look like for academic units with large research programs?" and then, "Which units have experienced large increases in research funding?"
B. Academic Units with Large Research Programs
The following figures address where the increases in funding are occurring by focusing on research expenditures stemming from external sources only, since in many ways the amount of funds secured from outside the institution is the more impartial indicator of research funding success. The first set of figures shows research spending from external sources for the University's largest units Ñ the Medical School, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and the College of Engineering.
The Medical School (Figure 5) spent $207 million from external sources in FY2001, and has been growing at an average rate of 9.2 percent since 1996. The growth rate in externally funded research for the institution as a whole for this same period is about 4.7 percent. Not only is the growth rate of the Medical School impressively high, but considering the size of the expenditure base, the actual growth of $71 million over the past five years represents the largest fraction of the University's overall growth over this time period.
Figure 5
Medical School Research Expenditures, External Sources, FY1991-FY2001
Research spending growth has been relatively slower in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, which spent $38 million from external sponsors in FY2001 (Figure 6). However, it has grown at an annual rate of about 5.5 percent over the last five years, an increase from a growth rate of 1.5 percent per year in the first half of the 1990s.
Figure 6
College of Literature, Science & the Arts Research Expenditures, External Sources, FY1991-FY2001
The College of Engineering has a much larger research budget than LS&A, which now approaches $100 million in expenditures from external funds (Figure 7). Its recent growth rate is 2.3 percent annually for the last five years, following a period in the early 1990s when the rate topped 10 percent.
Figure 7
College of Engineering Research Expenditures, External Sources, FY1991-FY2001
C. Academic Units Experiencing Exceptional Growth in Research
The next three figures feature units that have grown at exceptional rates over recent years.
The Institute for Social Research (ISR), which spent $52 million from external sources on research last year, has been growing at an average rate of 13 percent in recent years (Figure 8). In general terms, ISR attributes this growth to the increased interest on the part of the National Institutes of Health to conduct research that can be done so expertly at ISR. For instance, NIH decided to expand the scope of the Health and Retirement Survey already being conducted by ISR social scientists, adding more than $4 million in new funding to what is already a large project. The Michigan Interdisciplinary Center on Social Inequalities is a new NIH-funded activity operated jointly with the School of Public Health, and grows out of the fact that the UM has a superb cadre of faculty and so many NIH projects from which this Center can draw.
Figure 8
Institute for Social Research Research Expenditures, External Sources, FY1991-FY2001
Another reason for ISR's growth stems from a conscious and planned effort to expand the volume of surveys undertaken by the Survey Research Center (SRC). Over the past four years, the SRC has sought to increase the volume Ñ in dollars of expenditures as well as numbers of surveys Ñ by accepting more bids from both on-campus and off-campus academics. This plan was hugely successful and is another reason why ISR research spending has grown rapidly.
Since 1996, the School of Public Health has been growing steadily at an impressive rate of 16.5 percent! (Figure 9). Public Health attributes this success in part to an internal decision made in the mid-1990s to increase the School's own investment in research support for its faculty. Subsequently, faculty in Public Health have been awarded several large research awards from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. These factors combined have helped elevate the School of Public Health into a national leader among peer institutions.
Figure 9
School of Public Health Research Expenditures, External Sources, FY1991-FY2001
Finally, Figure 10 shows the research growth trend for the School of Education. In 1991, the School of Education represented a relatively small part of the institution's research portfolio, but that has changed very markedly over the past decade. Research expenditures from external sources topped $13 million last year, as a result of steady growth at the phenomenal average annual rate of 30 percent since FY1996! This school attributes its growth to research partnerships its faculty have formed with faculty from other UM schools, such as with the College of Engineering and LS&A, and to greater attention being paid to research questions of national significance. The Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education (Hi-CE) is one of these very successful collaborations between the School of Education and Engineering, leading not only to well-funded research, but also to the development of new educational technology that has formed the basis for a new spin-off company. As examples of the research focus of its faculty, the School of Education is now the home of three national research centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education:
- The National Center for Postsecondary Improvement,
- The Consortium for Policy Research in Education, a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, and
- The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, a collaboration with Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Figure 10
School of Education Research Expenditures, External Sources, FY1991-FY2001
D. Other Research-Related Sponsored Activities
I have one other indicator of growth and success that I want to share with you, even though by National Science Foundation standards, it is not strictly defined as "research." We receive some grants and contracts to support activity that is coded as "Instructional" or "Community Service." In some schools, these funded projects are in fact important contributors to the research program and prestige of that unit nationally. One large category consists of "training grants" that the NIH awards us to support graduate study in the health sciences. These are counted as Instructional grants and not included in our research totals, yet they support our research mission and we compete successfully for them because of our research excellence. Likewise, faculty in the School of Social Work were involved for many years in a unique worker re-education project that we conducted for the United Auto Workers. In part, this project involved the UM because of the expertise in testing and evaluation that our faculty offered.
In the category of projects coded as "Community Service," some of our units received some very large and prestigious awards, which again are important indicators of the excellence of our faculty and their research. One major example is a grant that has gone to the School of Public Health to operate the Population Fellows Program for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides placements around the world for professionals involved in advanced degree work in population studies.
Let me show you just three examples of where these "Other Sponsored Activities" can make a significant contribution to our overall research and education mission (Figure 11).
First, the School of Public Health, as I mentioned, has both a number of training grants and the U.S. AID grant that involves some $48 million in project expenditures over the five-year period ending in 2004. When we add these figures to the school's totals, its average growth for the past two years is nearly 20 percent per year, further raising the already impressive average annual rate of 16.5 percent for research expenditures alone.
Two other units where other external funding makes a significant difference in the picture of their activity are the Flint and Dearborn campuses. At Dearborn, for instance, the growth in the Instructional and Community Service spending categories exceeds that for externally sponsored research over the last two years. At Flint, where the rates for externally funded Research and externally funded Instructional and Community Service Projects are about the same, the magnitude of spending from other sponsored categories is about 2.5 times larger than for research. By including the figures for growth in these additional areas of externally sponsored activity, we can more accurately represent the vibrancy that these two campuses contribute to the University.
Because it is useful to consider sponsored activity in these other categories, a table including this information for all schools and colleges has been added to this year's Appendix as Table 3.
Figure 11
The Significance of "Other Sponsored Activity"
|
School of Public Health |
FY1999 |
FY2000 |
FY2001 |
Avg % Chg. |
|
Total Expenditures |
$30M |
$36M |
$43M |
19.9% |
|
Research, External |
25M |
28M |
29M |
7.4% |
|
Research, Internal |
0.6M |
3.7M |
2.7M |
249% |
|
Other External** |
3.9M |
4.9M |
11.0M |
75% |
|
UM-Dearborn |
FY1999 |
FY2000 |
FY2001 |
Avg % Chg. |
|
Total Expenditures |
$3.7M |
$5.4M |
$4.9M |
18.7% |
|
Research, External |
1.6M |
2.5M |
2.0M |
18.1% |
|
Research, Internal |
0.7M |
0.7M |
0.8M |
7.9% |
|
Other External** |
1.4M |
2.2M |
2.1M |
28.1% |
|
UM-Flint |
FY1999 |
FY2000 |
FY2001 |
Avg % Chg. |
|
Total Expenditures |
$2.1M |
$3.0M |
$3.1M |
24.8% |
|
Research, External |
0.5M |
1.0M |
0.8M |
50.3% |
|
Research, Internal |
0.7M |
0.4M |
0.3M |
-34.3% |
|
Other External** |
0.9M |
1.6M |
2.1M |
48.7% |
** "Other External" is the combined total of expenditures from external sponsors coded as "Instructional" or "Community Service."
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