Despite signs last year that academic spending might be cut, the University has continued to secure funding for research programs this year and has set academic research funding as a goal for the future.
Funds were allocated to strategic areas in the University this fall, using money from an endowment payout and $1 million that was taken from the schools last spring.
The Board of Trustees approved a 5 percent endowment payout of $6.2 million in May, including $4.5 million to go toward academic funding related to the Strategic Plan for Academic Excellence.
Last year the University cut $2 million dollars from academic spending but said that at least half of that could be re-allocated to schools this year if a report of the financial status of the institution was positive.
In October the census report was released, which showed an increase from projected figures. This allowed the University to release the $1 million back into the academic spending budget for the schools.
Funded programs were chosen because they are already strengths of the University and because they have the potential to bring GW national recognition, said the executive vice president for academic affairs Donald Lehman.
“We’re trying to move up the standing of the University, and one of the ways we can do that is to get these areas ranked,” he said.
Funds were allocated to eight new signature programs in the University, including $200,000 given to the business school for two new institutes, the Institute for Corporate Responsibility and the Institute for Integrating Statistics in the Decision Sciences. Other funded programs include engineering, biology, sociology and special education.
$1.5 million was given to the Elliott School for international education initiatives, Gelman Library for an electronic classroom and Academic Technologies for pod-casting.
In the early fall, $260,000 was allocated to Writing in the Disciplines, and $465,000 was given to the Columbian College to hire 15 instructors for language programs.
Lehman said the rest of the endowment payout will be used to hire new faculty members.
After the October census the $1 million was released directly back to the schools it was taken from, and the other $1 million was allocated to programs including the Dean’s search in the Columbian College, salary shortfalls of part-time professors in the Elliott School and Blackboard technology related expenses.
Last week, the University selected Johns Hopkins University Provost Steven Knapp to be GW’s 16th president. In Knapp’s introductory press conference last week in the Jack Morton Auditorium, Presidential Search Committee Vice-chair Nelson Carbonell, who is also on the University’s Board of Trustees, said Knapp was chosen in part because of his ability to secure funding for academic research.
“We aspire to be great, and we really feel we’re on the cusp of being one of the first-rate research Universities in the country,” Carbonell said before the press conference. “Dr. Knapp had the experience in doing that, he was at one of those first-rate Universities.”
Johns Hopkins is the nation’s largest research university with $1.5 billion in federally sponsored research expenditure, according to a University press release.
Knapp said he is excited for the opportunity to expand academic research funding at GW and said it was a major initiative for him in his 11 years at JHU.
“One of the things I’ve been involved in at Johns Hopkins is opening research opportunities for students,” he said in an interview with The Hatchet before Tuesday’s press conference.
“I see the relationship between strength of research and the undergraduate experience as mutually reinforcing,” he said. “It’s exciting to develop that relationship.”
-Brandon Butler
contributed to this report.
