<p>Connecticut</a> Legislature Approves Transformational $1.5 Billion Investment in UConn | UConn Today</p>
<p>This is definitely a step in the right direction. We’ve desperately needed an upgrade in infrastructure and faculty for some time now, and it’s impressive that the CT legislature was able to pass the funding so quickly after it was proposed. I’m optimistic that it will make some real changes in UConn’s academics (ie the new chemistry building that came from UConn 2000). Personally I’m hoping for a lot of new faculty for the math department in particular, and new math and engineering buildings. The current buildings (MSB, EII, and UTEB) are all at least 50-60 years old, and MSB has some of the worst classrooms on campus.</p>
<p>I’d still take this article with a grain of salt, however. I feel like it’s too much of a puff piece. In reality, UConn is not “one of the world’s elite research universities”. It fails to break the top 200 in international rankings, and for legitimate reasons. Most graduate rankings are based upon the quality and quantity of research coming out of a university. Furthermore if the research isn’t cited in other articles by other leading researchers enough, it is less valuable and doesn’t raise profile as much.The departments here definitely have strong researchers, and most have at least one or two who have some serious clout in their fields. But for the most part the faculty here just don’t measure up to those at other universities in terms of consistent publications in quality journals. </p>
<p>The gist of this is that academic research is a mean and cut throat field. PIs have to work non stop to get funding and then push their post-docs and graduate students to get the results they need to publish quality articles. This leads to more funding which leads to more articles, and the circle goes around until you retire. UConn is making a good first step towards this by going after high profile faculty that can produce such research and then constructing new buildings for the lab space the faculty needs. But it’s just a first step. UConn doesn’t yet have a strong reputation yet, so it will take some time to attract such researchers. It will also involve lots of money and benefits as incentives to such faculty. Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later, but they are up against over 200 years of the world’s actual leading research universities in the regional New England area. </p>
<p>I guess the message is that this is a laudable effort by the university, just don’t expect UConn to come close to the actual elite research universities that you hear about in the news. It’s a much more complex issue than just throwing money from the state legislature at it and waiting a few years.</p>