Outlook
by Walter V. Wendler, SIUC Chancellor
Southern Illinois
University Carbondale is undertaking a major initiative involving 200 people
from on and off campus to boost research dollars, provide better incentives
for faculty research, and increase graduate student enrollment. The initiative,
called Southern 150, sets goals and priorities for the year 2019, the 150th
birthday of Southern. These priorities in research and graduate education
will also allow us to enrich undergraduate education, by expanding our
growing undergraduate research program and securing more opportunities
for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates to work together in
the classroom, laboratory, and studio.
The contribution of graduate students to
research—and the role research plays in graduate student education—would
be hard to overstate. It is not atypical that all of the projects described
in this issue's feature articles involve graduate students as key contributors
or, in the case of one thesis project (see Hostile
Takeovers), as the lead investigator. In FY 2001, more than $3 million
from external grants and contracts funded graduate assistantships at SIUC.
The importance of nurturing faculty research
also would be hard to overstate. Typically, many of the faculty featured
in Perspectives have had small SIUC grants to get them started,
to bridge gaps in external funding, or to help them take their research
in a new direction. That is again the case here, in disciplines ranging
from health education to engineering. These faculty have gone on to succeed
at winning external grants from a range of sources: federal and state agencies,
industry, and private foundations.
Projects featured in this issue have implications
for natural resource management, for the construction industry, for public
health, for agriculture, and for our human heritage. Their geographic scope
ranges from the Shawnee National Forest to the river valleys of Peru, where
anthropologist Izumi Shimada is piecing together the life of an ancient
culture.
We hope you enjoy the visit.
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