Ferguson faces falling research funding

Ball State’s next president will inherit a university that has lost more than $15 million in yearly research funding since 2009, according to the Ball State Fact Book.

Paul Ferguson, who will take office as president Aug. 1, said in his acceptance address that a major focus for his administration will be increasing Ball State’s work as a research institution and increasing the university’s research funding to $40 million over the next several years.

The goal comes from the university’s recent strategic plan and is more than double the entirety of Ball State’s external grants for 2012-13 from the government, businesses and personal donors.

The amount of funding given strictly for research is 6.5 percent of the goal — $2,596,016, according to the sponsored programs office.

Michael Hicks, director for the Center of Business and Economic Research, said the loss of funding isn’t because Ball State isn’t good at research. Instead, federal and state focuses have shifted.

What the university does well, he said, is education and health sciences. This is at odds with the federal government’s focus on engineering and medical dollars.

“We certainly are not getting worse at research,” he said.

Another problem faced by Ball State is the relatively young nature of the research title. The university recently became a Carnegie Foundation-recognized research institution under President Jo Ann Gora.

This designation drew young research professionals to work at Ball State. However, many of them don’t have the experience more established faculty at competing institutions possess, but that is only a short-term worry.

“Their best years are ahead of them and that should speak well to us,” Hicks said. “The new professors that we have hired because we [are now a research facility] are going to pay dividends for decades to come.”

One way to bridge the money gap, Ferguson said at his announcement, is to balance research programs.

“I certainly think I bring a certain skill set of building academic programs and research programs and research funding that has the right fit and balance for the institution,” he said. “Ball State is a public research university, so we want to make sure that what we do with research is fully commiserate with that.”

Ferguson’s experience most recently comes from the University of Maine, a school ranked nationally in the top 100 research schools by the National Science Foundation.

In 2010, the university had more than $100 million in external research expenditures, much of which was federally funded.

He also has worked as dean of graduate studies and research at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and as dean of the graduate college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Along with experience, Ferguson will have another force working in his favor — a strong research infrastructure, said Robert Morris, associate provost for research at Ball State.

Morris said the faculty and students who work on research are far more important than just a lump sum of money.

“[Research] success isn’t what the number is,” he said.

What really helps strengthen a research institution, Morris said, is opening up funding for as many professors and students as possible, instead of focusing millions of dollars at one or two fields.

“Having a productive faculty across all of campus and all seven [academic] colleges is how you strengthen things for one year, three years and 10 years out,” he said.

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