Thursday, February 5, 1998
Faculty Grant Program divides campus
FACULTY: Debate ensues as North, South campuses voice
preferences for fund allocation
By Brian Fishman
Daily Bruin Contributor
Eager to avert a civil war between the North and South campuses,
faculty and administrators are rushing to mend problems with a
research grant program.
The Council on Research (COR) vows that the $1.8 million it
gives out in research grants each year will be distributed for
strictly research purposes. And since North Campus researchers have
fewer outside funding sources than their South campus counterparts,
they are worried about not having sufficient funding for
infrastructure.
Members of COR, consisting of various faculty members at UCLA,
insist that they are not making changes, but merely following the
guidelines for making disbursements from this grant, known as the
Faculty Grant Program (FGP).
"We’re returning to the principles by which the money was
awarded 15 years ago," said chair of the COR committee, Richard
Gatti, who is also a pathology professor. "It’s not a change, just
a return to principles."
The problems began earlier this year, when an undisclosed North
Campus professor was denied funds to purchase a computer chip. The
chip, Gatti said, would not have been used expressly for research
purposes, and therefore should not be funded through the FGP
program.
"A computer chip to improve a computer’s memory – these are
multi-purpose items that are impossible to relate for a particular
project," Gatti said.
The COR policy has been to defer requests to fund multipurpose
items, Gatti insisted.
Some professors disagree.
"(The chip decision) decision was silly," said philosophy
Professor David Kaplan.
But, countered Gatti, FGP grants have never been intended for
"multi-purpose" items, and it was a mistake to fund some
multipurpose items in the past. The COR bylaws support this
claim.
"There seems to be a strong interest in changing those
guidelines by a few vocal members of the Academic Senate," Gatti
explained.
Some professors feel that the use of FGP funds for
"multi-purpose" uses is justified, and thus are upset about the
precedent set in the chip decision.
That precedent is that a "legitimate piece of equipment cannot
be paid for from the faculty grant money, if the expense serves to
enhance a piece of equipment that could conceivably be used for
other purposes," Kaplan continued.
FGP money could be used to pay for the part of the machine
devoted to research, while other funds could pay for the rest,
Kaplan explained.
COR is not adverse to discussing changing the bylaws. "We simply
need a more convincing argument," Gatti stated.
Many North Campus researchers feel that if they lose FGP funds,
"they may be cut out of research support," said Academic Senate
Chairman Chand Viswanathan.
And, while Viswanathan says he understands their dilemma, he
claims that FGP funds are to be used expressly for research
purposes, and any other use is invalid.
Gatti continued to say that some professors have asked for money
to pay for pencils and other equipment. This, he says, would be a
misallocation of funds.
Because there is so much pressure on the faculty members
currently responsible for dispersing the grants, COR is trying to
make the process easier on the evaluators.
The new changes come in response to a 1997 report from
University of California President Richard Atkinson’s office.
These changes, said Gatti, are necessary to limiting the
misallocation of funds to non-research projects.
"We were called upon by Viswanathan to respond to this report
and to re-examine potential sources of funding," Gatti said.
"I feel that we have to bring a resolution to this; we need a
solution," Viswanathan said.
The proposed changes include increasing the number of people
involved in the initial grant review process, and creating a
separate sub-committee within COR to make the final decision on
which grants to fund.
The ultimate goal is to lower the number of grants given, while
increasing the amount of each grant.
"Rather than fund 100, we’d like to fund the 95 best grants,"
Gatti said.
"The money is for faculty to be distributed by faculty," Gatti
concluded, "And I personally think we should be doing a better job
at it."