For faculty at the Cockrell School of Engineering, balancing academia and drumming up the grant money to make research and teaching possible can be a time-consuming endeavor, especially for younger professors.
The road to engineering tenure requires publication in research journals, doctoral-student supervision and a solid teaching record, said Anthony Ambler, electrical engineering professor and chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.. It also involves applying for research grants and other funding in the public and private sectors, which, after two or three years of start-up funding, becomes the only source of monetary support for faculty research.
“For young assistant professors, what they’re required to get for tenure, the bar is rising all the time,” Ambler said. “It’s not at all unusual for a tenure candidate to bring in $1.5 to $2 million.”
He said junior faculty members tend to only get four hours of sleep per night under the rigorous demands, but the pressure eases after getting established through publications and grants.
“I’m not exaggerating one iota — the load on them is tremendous,” Ambler said.
Jeffrey Andrews, associate electrical engineering professor and director at the Wireless Networking and Communications Group, said much of his time was spent on research proposals. He said that, in general, there is a correlation between a professor’s research funding and potential to draw graduate students, whose stipends are made possible through the grants and other funding.
“If you don’t have [research assistants], there’s a lot of pressure to get research funding,” Andrews said.
John Halton, associate dean for college relations at the Engineering Foundation, said that roughly 20 percent of funds for University students come from the state.
“The other 80 percent or so we have to find in competitive ways,” he said.
Halton also said competition among universities for philanthropic contributions and research grants has increased during the recession.
The research made possible through funding was important to both the education of engineering graduates and their future impact on the field, he said.
“Ultimately, technology can help lead us out of this recession,” Halton said.
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