BusinessReport.com

Mohamed Noor is a renowned evolutionary biologist and walking grant magnet—the kind of faculty a university loves to have and hates to lose.

LSU had him, and lost him. Why? Competition for top-performing faculty among research universities is intense, and LSU is less equipped than many to keep its best and brightest from straying. In Noor’s case, Duke University could offer more on several levels simply because Duke has a lot more money to throw around.

LSU made the best counteroffer it could, though in the end it wasn’t enough. The episode and others like it point to the challenges LSU faces as it chases the flagship agenda and seeks to raise its profile. LSU’s endowment, while growing, is still a fraction of that of many of its peers. Forever LSU, the university’s current fundraising campaign, aims to close the gap and make Louisiana’s flagship school more competitive.

LSU couldn’t provide specific numbers on faculty that has been recruited away, but last fiscal year the university lost 45 tenured or tenured-track faculty for reasons that include being lured to other academic institutions. Mimi S. Ruebsamen, director of LSU’s human resources department, said the school does not conduct exit interviews so it does not know why employees choose to depart.

Kevin Carman, dean of LSU’s College of Basic Sciences, regrets losing Noor, who he describes as a “young, rising star” likely destined for a seat on the National Academy of Sciences.

“The more visible they become, the more of a target they become,” Carman says. “We want that. We want faculty that other universities want to hire. And we’re not always going to win those competitions. But we want to win at least as many as we’re losing.”

Nice to know you

Noor, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and spent two years at Cornell doing post-doctorate work before coming to LSU in 1998, left for Duke in May 2005. He insists he never felt “let down” by LSU and left on amicable terms. He did leave, however, with plenty of incentive supplied by Duke, no doubt. Universities—including LSU—have no scruples about stealing talent from competitors. Business is business.

Every case is different, though faculty members rarely leave for just one reason. Salary is part of it, but academics also put a premium on things like lab space, staff and money for grad students. LSU does better in some areas than others.

When he was still at LSU, Noor turned down an earlier offer from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. LSU administration moved fast to grant Noor’s wishes, placing his daughter in the university’s lab school as a student, making his wife’s temporary instructor appointment a continuing appointment and giving him “a big pot of money” so he could hang onto prized staff and hire a tech.

Post-docs and grad students are indispensable in university research, though recruiting them to Louisiana can be tough because of our reputation as a poor state, Noor says. If recruiting was one area of frustration at LSU, another was an infrastructure he sometimes found deficient: the library, computing services and staffing, for instance, though these weren’t the only issues.

All top schools lose faculty to other institutions—Ivy League institutions included, Noor points out. But what should LSU be doing that it’s not already? A good start, he thinks, would be rewarding top-performing faculty with merit-based raises as opposed to across-the-board equity raises.

“The more you say equity, you’re rewarding mediocrity,” Noor says. “So you’ve got somebody who’s publishing a ton and getting things done, and either they put on the brakes or they leave.”

On the plus side

Noor was impressed by the level of state support in the form of then-Gov. Mike Foster’s $22.5 million information technology initiative, a sizeable portion of which benefited LSU and paid for several lines of Noor’s research, which is very expensive. And he misses the direct financial incentives LSU gave in the form of returned overhead payments—something Duke doesn’t do. And while turnover happens everywhere, he says, LSU might be disproportionately targeted by other universities who see LSU as relatively poor, which means faculty are paid less and lab space maybe isn’t as plentiful or modern as in some places.

Carman, an LSU professor since 1989 and dean of the College of Basic Sciences since 2003, says faculty members rarely if ever leave only because of sparse resources or any other single cause. Multiple factors are involved, such as family issues. That said, Carman’s college—which includes biology, chemistry and physics—is lagging in infrastructure, he admits. The buildings, quality of its labs and the tech support aren’t to the same level as that offered by many of LSU’s peers and competitors, Carman says.

“It is probably a bigger challenge in the basic sciences because we do have large infrastructure needs,” he adds. “There are expensive pieces of equipment that are required to do the research, infrastructure issues like ventilators, fume hoods that require expensive HVAC systems. All aspects of our infrastructure tend to be expensive.”

You cannot spend money on those things, of course, as long as you don’t mind watching the best students and faculty pass you by. Basic Sciences has world-class faculty members, Carman says, though it’s a constant struggle to hang onto them.

“The key is that this is a national competition,” he says. “What is important for people in the state to understand is that we aren’t just competing against SEC universities. We’re competing occasionally against Harvard and regularly against Purdue and the University of California-Davis for those faculty. The good news is we have been making progress.”

Getting creative

Carman says LSU has come a long way over the last decade, especially since the launch of its flagship agenda. Still, Basic Sciences has gone about as far as it’s going to go with the facilities it has, he says. Lots of money will have to be spent and there’s really no way around it, Carman says.

“We have to adopt the attitude that this is something that has to be done,” Carman says.

It’ll require creative solutions. Carman points to the LSU business college, which is trying to raise $30 million in private donations to match $30 million from the state for a new building. He says Basic Sciences—which is stuffed into Choppin Hall—likely will be forced to follow suit if it wants new facilities anytime soon.

Robert Svoboda had extra incentive to trade his faculty job in LSU’s physics department for one at UC Davis: Katrina destroyed his home in New Orleans. He took a temporary job at Davis in January 2006 and was offered a permanent position last October. Svoboda, who studies particle physics, and his wife, a medical physicist, mulled returning to Louisiana but opted not to. The opportunities for her were much better in California, while Davis offered him a great salary and—even better—money to start a laboratory.

“I said to the dean, ‘I need $100,000 to look into this new line of research. Can I get it right away?’” Svoboda recalls. “They answered me back in about two days and said, ‘OK. It looks like a very promising line of research. Yeah, we’ll do it.’ That’s much easier to do here than it was at LSU.”

He doesn’t believe LSU is as prepared to evaluate and respond to researchers’ requests for seed money as quickly. Not that Davis approves every request, but the evaluation process is fast, Svoboda says. One difference is that deans at Davis have a good deal of discretionary money, which cuts out red tape. All in all, it’s a place where a scientist can really spread his wings, Svoboda says, adding that it’s also a lot easier to recruit post-docs and grad students to California than Louisiana. The people he did get at LSU tended to have Louisiana connections.

Lacking support

The physics department at Davis has almost the same number of professors as LSU’s physics department, though Davis has 159 physics grad students and LSU has half that, Svoboda says. The difference is that California does a phenomenal job in funding. Fellowships are as numerous as are the grad students who take advantage of them. At LSU, fellowships are scarcer, as are grad students. Svoboda had one grad student at LSU. At Davis, he has three.

“It’s very hard to support students at LSU,” he says. “You have to get all your money from federal grants, and the state doesn’t match very well—and the [research funding] agencies know that.”

Those agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, prefer giving money to universities in states that provide matching funding, Svoboda says. In California, higher ed funding is the last thing to be feel the knife at budget-trimming time. In Louisiana, it’s historically been among the first.

Despite the problems, Svoboda saw progress at LSU during his tenure, which began in 1989 and ended last year. He cites the renovation/expansion of Nicholson Hall, home to LSU physics and astronomy since the 1930s, and strong tech support. Svoboda also praises LSU’s cluster hiring initiative, which funnels additional resources into faculty hires in selected departments with the idea of making LSU a major player in specific programs. The current emphasis is on Atlantic Studies, Computational Science and Materials Science.

“It’s like football,” Svoboda says. “It’s no different. Once you get five good players, it’s much easier to get another five. I think the cluster hiring is a very good idea. I think that’ll help a lot.”

A space odyssey

Zaki Bassiouni, dean of LSU’s College of Engineering, says two things in particular are making it harder to fill open endowed chair positions on the engineering faculty: lack of money and lack of space. Endowments generate enough earnings for support costs—computers, grad students, travel, etc.—but not enough to cover the salary of a full, tenure-track professor who’s worth recruiting.

Of course, they’re going to want a nice lab and office and all the amenities, something Bassiouni is hard put to deliver. When engineering gets an outstanding prospect in its sights—someone too good to pass up, the current strategy is to approach central administration, hat in hand and essentially beg for the resources to seal the deal, Bassiouni says. But even if money for salary is found, finding room for a new hire is always problematic.

“We would, of course, be in a much better situation if we had more space,” he says. “The space issue is the most difficult.”

Bassiouni knows the state isn’t going to give him a new building, though he’s hoping private fundraising—also under way in engineering—will yield the same deal the business college got in the form of state matching funds. As far as engineering faculty being lured away by other universities, Bassiouni says he doesn’t take it sitting down—despite the challenges from a resources perspective.

“We don’t throw our hands in the air when somebody is courted by another institution,” he says. “We just dealt with a recent case when another university tried to hire one of our faculty. We matched the offer and gave him some assistance and he stayed.”

Bassiouni is rooting for Forever LSU to realize its fundraising goals, as it would be “our salvation,” he says. Engineering’s own goal to help pay for the renovation of its home, the Patrick F. Taylor Hall, formerly CEBA, is between $30 million and $40 million.

“If we have several tens of millions sitting there generating earnings, I would not be worrying about all this,” Bassiouni says.

LSU did well during the last legislative session, when several construction and renovation projects were approved. Not all those requiring state bonds will be funded, however, given the state’s strict rules on indebtedness.

Todd Pourciau, LSU assistant vice chancellor for research and economic development, says lack of space is a big issue at LSU—not good for a research-extensive university. For instance, the LSU Museum of Natural Science, which has the fourth-largest, university-based bird collection in the world behind Harvard, California and Michigan, is stuffed into the basement at Foster Hall.

“They absolutely need more space for what they do,” Pourciau says.

One idea under consideration is a “discovery hotel”—basically a large facility with lab and meeting space flexible enough to accommodate multiple research teams and staff. It would be used for interdisciplinary projects on which multiple departments participate and/or as a place to house newly hired faculty. Such a facility would help LSU in the recruiting game, Pourciau says.

One who stayed

While it’s always a challenge for LSU to keep its brightest stars from slipping away, not everyone is headed for the exits: Mark Batzer, for one, likes LSU and is in no hurry to leave—even though he’s received several offers from institutions with deeper pockets and handsomer pay packages.

Batzer, a biology professor who specializes in comparative genomics and molecular genetics, says he frequently gets offers from other schools. New York University, Penn State and Indiana are just a few that have tried to take him away.

“The fact of the matter is, there’s never a shortage of opportunities to migrate,” he says. “In each case when you think about making a move, there are lots of factors that go into it. Strangely enough for me at least, it’s always worked out that I’ve ended up taking the lower offer every time.”

Batzer, a Michigan native who’s lived in Louisiana long enough that he considers himself an “honorary Cajun,” received his Ph.D. at LSU in the late 1980s and did his post-doc at the LSU medical school in New Orleans. Later he worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and eventually wound up back in New Orleans, this time as faculty member at the medical school. In 2001, Batzer accepted a job offer from the Baton Rouge campus—in part because new lab space was coming online. Today, it’s known officially as the “Batzer Lab.”

“I think really the big thing that attracted me here was the environment, which seemed favorable,” he says. “It seemed to be good for both graduate and undergraduate students. Needless to say, it has not disappointed me.”

Batzer has published 122 scientific papers at LSU, roughly half the number he’s published in his entire career, and thinks he’d be hard pressed to do better elsewhere. His research has been featured in Science, Nature and the Journal of Molecular Biology among other publications, and he was recently made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Batzer is a keeper, in other words, and fortunately for LSU he’s showing no signs of restlessness—yet.

Batzer’s opinion is that LSU should do a better job advertising its assets beyond the immediate market to attract more all-star faculty members. The university’s supercomputing capacity is enormous, for instance. Also, he’s “tickled pink” by the quality of his undergrad and grad students. At least in the biology department and College of Basic Sciences, people are “down to earth and easy to interact with,” Batzer says. That’s one of LSU’s best attributes, in fact, and one that impresses prospective hires, he says.

“I think at this point really what we have to do is continue to stimulate and grow a culture of success here at the university,” Batzer says. “We’re somewhere in middle of the stream. We’ve made some progress here, but there’s always room for improvement.”