|
 Outlook
by Prudence
M. Rice
Acting Associate Dean of the GraduateSchool
and
Director of Research Development and
Administration
Given the title
of this column, I’m very pleased to report that the outlook for research
and scholarly/creative activity at SIUC is bright.
Campus faculty have long held regional,
national, and international claims to fame, and we have taken pride in
highlighting their accomplishments, and those of their students, in this
magazine. At any given time a thousand or so externally funded research
projects are in progress on campus, and scores of scholarly and creative
projects—from books to paintings, music compositions to documentaries—are
produced without such funding. There is, in other words, a lot of activity
going on behind the scenes, of which the articles in Perspectives are merely
the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
The university research enterprise cannot
be fulfilled without dedicated and forward-thinking faculty. Nor can it
be fulfilled without dedicated staff in the trenches. But it also requires
nurturing and support from the highest levels of the university administration.
Faculty, students, and the public alike will benefit from the fact that
our new leaders, SIUC Chancellor Walter Wendler and SIU President James
Walker, are strongly committed to enhancing the research mission of SIUC.
Again, the outlook is very bright.
The projects you will read about in this
issue of Perspectives, many of which are supported by major federal
or state grants, hold great promise for advances in areas as divergent
as public policy, flood severity prediction, bioremediation, materials
science, and medical care.
Readers will note the significant contributions
of students, both graduate and undergraduate, in these activities. Learning
is discovery, and what better way for students to learn than through active
participation in faculty projects? This is what a research university is
all about. |
