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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

  1. 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?

  2. 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?

  3. 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?

  4. 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

Other Subcommittees

Steering Committee for Natural Sciences Strategic Planning

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