
Subcommittee for Research Resources and Faculty Issues for Natural Sciences Strategic Planning at Rice University

Mission Statement
To attract, nurture, and retain faculty of the highest quality.
To provide a responsive infrastructure to encourage and facilitate scholarship and teaching of the highest quality.
THANKS to all those who participated in the workshop related to Faculty Issues and Research Resources on Saturday, January 18. A summary of the comments and suggestions that emerged from this workshop is available.
Topics and Issues
- Incentives and Compensation
How should research, teaching, and service be weighted in faculty evaluations? How should each of these activities be assessed? Can the current system of tenure, promotion, and annual salary review be improved? How can we improve start-up and continuing support for faculty?
- Enhancing the Teaching Environment
What changes in faculty size/constitution could enhance teaching? What infrastructure improvements would enhance our teaching effort? Would additional positions similar to Huxley Fellows (EEB) or Evans Instructors (MATH) enhance teaching in other Departments? How should relative teaching loads be decided? Should the Wiess School adjust the teaching load for junior faculty to provide enhanced opportunities to excel in research?
- Enhancing the Research Environment
What central facilities must be maintained by the University? How can the changing and ever growing administrative needs of faculty be met by the Wiess School? What kind of system should be put in place to provide emergency funding for graduate research fellows? Should we keep and/or enhance our research faculty positions?
- Enhancing National Rankings
How can our programs enhance their stature? How should the Wiess School allocate new faculty positions? What role should be played by department rankings, teaching needs, hot research areas, cross-departmental/cross-divisional bridges, local advantages (e.g., Texas Medical Center, NASA, chemical industry, etc.)? Should we attempt to improve our NRC rankings or use the NRC rankings as a basis for determining which departments need to be, or can be, improved?

Members of the Research Resources/Faculty Issues Subcommittee
- Andy Barron, Chemistry, Chair
- Bonnie Bartel, Biochemistry and Cell Biology
- Michael Gustin, Biochemistry and Cell Biology
- David Queller, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Alan Levander, Geology and Geophysics
- Stephen Semmes, Mathematics
- Randy Hulet, Physics
- Jon Weisheit, Space Physics and Astronomy
- Jordan Konisky, Graduate Studies
- Jean Vorhaben, Sponsored Research

Other Subcommittees
Steering Committee for Natural Sciences Strategic Planning

Updated by Rachel Miller (rmiller@rice.edu)
10-Jun-97