Brown to BUSPH Faculty: Be Creative, Collaborative on Research.

With federal research dollars drying up, BU will have to work more collaboratively and creatively to find “sweet spots” in the research agenda at a federal agency level, not via Congressional appropriations, BU President Robert Brown told BUSPH faculty at a meeting Feb. 13.

BU President Robert Brown speaks to SPH faculty (Photo: Lisa Chedekel)Brown laid out several challenges facing the university, including the “tough federal environment for research,” which he acknowledged would likely cause “high anxiety” across both the medical and Charles River campuses. But he said the tightened federal resources would provide opportunities for university researchers to set clear priorities and collaborate across departments.

He noted that BU recently joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), an elite organization of 61 leading research universities in the U.S. and Canada – a designation that he said “gets us at the table with other institutions of like minds” who are pushing strong research agendas.

Among the other challenges he cited was the new emphasis on the “value proposition” of higher education, which has everyone from parents to the Obama administration looking at what return, in terms of job prospects, students will receive for the high cost of college. He said the onus was on each school at BU to “make the case” that tuition dollars would translate into real-world earning potential.

“We have to take advantage of our size and scope” and be “market-sensitive” in ensuring that curriculum offerings, including dual majors, are geared to fostering productive leaders, he said.

“Hopefully, we will not see a regulatory environment” imposed on college tuitions and outcomes, he added.

Also posing both a challenge and an opportunity is the need for more web-based educational offerings – an area in which Brown said BU seeks to be leader. New ways of alternative learning are changing “how we think about using the classroom,” Brown said. “We’re going to have to invest as an institution in experiments” and innovations.

He added: “Imagine if you had missed the chalkboard 800 years ago.”

Submitted by: Lisa Chedekel

chedekel@bu.edu