UCSC Review Summer 1996

Coming of Age: Research at UCSC by Jim Burns

Research. At the University of California, it joins teaching and public service as our threefold promise to the people of the state and the nation. In the pursuit of new knowledge, researchers unravel the mysteries of the physical world, strive for new understanding of the social and cultural phenomena of our lives, and examine the past with a view toward the future.

This report spotlights the extraordinary scope--and the significant contributions--of the research activities taking place at UCSC today.

As we approach a new century, UCSC is demonstrating that cutting-edge research and high-quality teaching are mutually supportive. The campus continues to build a reputation for teaching excellence: The 1996 college guide produced by U.S. News & World Report ranked UCSC thirteenth nationally in a new category for undergraduate teaching. Similarly, the campus is attracting national attention for its research, exceeding expectations for a campus that is just 30 years old.

Our report on research includes insights from eight professors and administrators who discuss the value of university research, the integral connection between teaching and research, and other challenges and rewards facing researchers today.

The formulation of the polio vaccine in 1954 spared millions of children from the ravages of the crippling disease. The development of the first digital computer in 1939 previewed a new era in technology. These two discoveries, made in university labs, only begin to illustrate the link between research and the evolution of 20th-century society.

In fact, the list of university research activities that have advanced our understanding of nature, led to the development of new products, or inspired whole new fields of inquiry is long: the development of a blood test for cancer, the documentation of environmental dangers from diminishing rain forests, the invention of the first motion picture with sound, the development of the Carbon-14 dating system. Even a product as commonplace as the seat belt, which has saved untold numbers of lives, was designed in a university research lab.

"Every single aspect of our world has been radically influenced by research," says Chancellor Karl Pister. "Certainly it's been a defining characteristic of civilization in the Western world, especially during the past two hundred years."

Sandra Faber, whose study of distant galaxies has earned her a reputation as one of the world's leading astronomers, notes that the ability to conduct research is a particularly human quality that can be traced all the way back to our primitive ancestors. "Learning to make stone tools or keep a calendar involved some kind of research," she says. "If we don't consistently and purposefully accumulate new knowledge, then everything we know about our civilization, our capabilities, and even our deeper understanding of life comes to a halt."

Coming of age as a research university

Though younger than most universities, UCSC is already making significant contributions to the creation of new knowledge. Researchers at UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences, for example, are primary players in Monterey Bay's emergence as a center for marine research. Education faculty have launched innovative classroom studies to improve the quality of K-12 education. Santa Cruz astronomers have helped develop the universe-probing W. M. Keck Telescopes and are key users of the Hubble Space Telescope. And a severely threatened population of wild peregrine falcons in California is once again stable, thanks to hatching and breeding techniques pioneered by the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group.

Campus-trained researchers also are making their mark. Last year, earth sciences alumnus Brent Constantz made national headlines for his company's development of a paste that could revolutionize treatment of bone fractures and osteoporosis. Physics alumnus Robert Shaw's work studying chaos theory helped earn him a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Another MacArthur Fellow, alumna Patricia Nelson Limerick, is the most outspoken proponent of the "new" western history--an attempt to study the western United States as a distinct entity, not simply an area settled by easterners. In the arts, conductor and UCSC graduate Kent Nagano has earned rave reviews for dazzling interpretations of late 19th- and 20th- century music.

The campus's expanding research profile is also evident in several recent national assessments. In its once-a-decade review of graduate programs in the United States, the highly regarded National Research Council ranked two of UCSC's doctoral programs in the top ten in the country: astronomy/ astrophysics and linguistics. Earth sciences and biochemistry/molecular biology both placed in the top quarter, and every other graduate program at UCSC made the top half.

The campus also scored well in two other studies that measured the quality of research at U.S. universities. By calculating the average number of times that papers in scientific publications were cited by other researchers, the Institute for Scientific Information found that from 1981 through 1991 UCSC ranked third among all U.S. universities for papers in the physical sciences-- behind only Harvard and Princeton. Further, from 1987 through 1990, UCSC ranked first in the physical sciences; twelfth in the biological sciences.

"Across the board, we are getting very high citation rankings in all of our disciplines, which is quite rare among schools-- certainly schools of our size," says David Kliger, dean of UCSC's Natural Sciences Division and professor of chemistry.

Paying for research: successes and challenges

The quality of UCSC's people and programs has not gone unnoticed by those who help fund research. Public and private support for the campus has increased steadily in recent years . Last year alone, UCSC researchers received $38.7 million in public and private grants--up almost 20 percent from the previous year. "The increase is remarkable given the grim federal funding climate," says James Gill, UCSC's associate vice chancellor for research. "I'm thrilled by the quality of the research that's done at UC Santa Cruz--and by the awareness of that quality within the academic community."

With Congress under pressure to balance the budget, Gill warns that the funding climate for federally supported research will worsen through the beginning of the next century. Almost as formidable may be the absence of a commonly accepted rationale for contemporary research. World War II, the space race, and the Cold War created a "national purpose" for research that is missing in the 1990s, observes Pister. "Base conversion, advanced technology, and global competitiveness are current substitutes, but they lack the dramatic appeal of a military threat, real or perceived. There is surely no lack of serious domestic problems around which to rally, but so far in the 1990s it has been difficult to define clearly and gain support for an agenda for our research universities," says Pister.

Those interviewed for this story also describe two misconceptions that could erode public support for research: that teaching and research are incompatible and that too much research is of the ivory-tower variety, with no practical application.

The synergy between research and teaching

The very quality that defines research excellence--an ability to ask new questions, explore new perspectives, and consider the impossible--translates well in a classroom, says Michael Tanner, UCSC's executive vice chancellor. "Often the best teachers are among the very best researchers," he notes.

An active researcher can do much more than simply transmit knowledge to a classroom of students, adds Faber. "Because I've been a researcher for 25 years, I am able to bring numerous anecdotes and stories to the classroom. I can bring an intimacy, a freshness, that I could never bring if I were simply reading from books. I understand the subject better because I'm actively engaged in it."

At its best, the dynamic between teaching and research is a two-way street. "In theater, research cannot take place exclusively behind a desk. An important element of discovery comes from teaching and producing a play," says Paul Whitworth, artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. "My interaction with students in the classroom will very often stimulate the way that I think about a particular play."

In fact, the symbiosis between teaching and research is a hallmark of UCSC, suggests education professor Roland Tharp. "Santa Cruz has a commitment to both teaching and research that is virtually unique in American higher education. We're a major research university that also takes very seriously its undergraduate responsibilities. There is still an effort to excel at both here--an effort that has been given up as impossible by other institutions," Tharp says.

UCSC undergraduates benefit from these twin commitments. Given UCSC's ratio of nine undergraduates to every one graduate student, faculty regularly turn to undergraduates for research assistance. "Undergraduates at UCSC are members, not outsiders, of the research community," Tanner says. "Papers are written by our faculty that cite the important contributions of undergraduates. You see undergraduate involvement in research at a much higher level at UCSC."

Chemistry student Ryan MacArthur, for example, was the first author on a paper published in a leading science journal, and anthropology major Kim Nichols was a member of a team conducting a rare primate dissection--almost unheard-of opportunities for undergraduates.

What is 'basic' today may be 'applied' tomorrow

Just as the line is blurred between teaching and research, the distinction between "basic" and "applied" research is anything but clear. In fact, basic research--acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge--that is considered esoteric one day may possess real- world applications the next. "In microelectronics," Pister says, "there is ample evidence to show that the folks who first worked on transistors and integrated circuits hadn't the slightest idea what their work was going to produce."

Tanner recalls the early 19th-century work of the young French mathematician Evariste Galois, whose seemingly obscure research focused on a system of numbers organized into fields. "Early in the 20th century, his work was cited as an area of research that was so pure that it could never be applied," Tanner says. "Today, his theory underlies every compact disc that you buy; it is used in the transmission of signals between Earth and satellites, or between cellular phones."

The view that we should emphasize applied over basic research assumes that researchers travel a well-marked road to discovery. "Research is our primary tool for understanding the world, but it is frequently a long-term investment without an obvious or immediate application," says Sandra Chung, chair of the Linguistics Board. "The view that only applied research is important is very shortsighted-- it assumes one already knows the answers." As often as not, the research journey includes numerous detours that may not lead anywhere. "Frequently in research, the most difficult part is determining what questions to ask," says Chung.

In fact, the return on society's investment in basic research today may not be realized for years. "Based on history, one could say basic research in many cases becomes applied research, "Faber says. "We just can't precisely say when or how that will occur."

Partnerships flourishing among researchers

As federal support for research shrinks, UCSC will need to look elsewhere to supplement government funding for basic research, predicts Gill. He anticipates some movement toward research sponsored by industries such as telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and energy. Increasing numbers of public-private partnerships won't be the only collaborations that result. Already, UCSC researchers have begun to work closely with people in other public agencies, and UCSC's associations with local K-12 schools (see story, page 8) reflect this change.

Collaborations with colleagues on other research campuses are also gaining momentum. A shortage of funds isn't the only reason for that metamorphosis; the complexity of today's research problems is also driving this change. "It is becoming harder to make these incremental advances in research," Faber says. "Every experiment is more complicated and has more parts."

The Monterey Bay Education, Science, and Technology Center, next to the new California State University campus at the former Fort Ord military base, is an example of a UCSC project that is expected to foster relationships with industry. The center also illustrates an underappreciated aspect of university research: the role it plays in economic development. "The reason the Monterey Bay region turned to the University of California to participate in the reuse of Fort Ord is not because we're a teaching institution," Gill says. "It's because we're a research institution--and the research is seen as making the region more attractive to industry."

Pister, for one, thinks the collaborations work well for all parties. Whether between the public and private sector, two or more public entities, or researchers representing different disciplines, the point of interaction is the place where the discovery often is found. "The interface between fields is more fertile than within the fields themselves in terms of generating new ideas," he says. "If you look at the environment only as a natural scientist or as an engineer, you miss the important insights of economics, the aesthetics of the environment, and other important human values."

A bright future for research at UCSC

The campus's setting on the Monterey Bay--and the partnerships that unique location spawns--is one reason why those interviewed for this story are optimistic about the future of research at UCSC. "An obvious advantage we enjoy is our location," Kliger says. "The whole Monterey Bay region, with the marine sanctuary, is just a tremendous resource that will enable us to be a world center for ocean sciences and marine biology." Computer science faculty are similarly buoyed by the campus's proximity to Silicon Valley.

Tanner and Gill say a new wave of faculty recruitments also bodes well for UCSC. The young researchers are talented and energetic--qualities that serve them well in both the lab and the classroom. "We have selected people of high international quality," Gill says.

These aren't the only reasons Chancellor Pister is optimistic about UCSC's future as a research university. UCSC's time-honored tradition of providing a higher education experience that is rich with human interaction will also serve the campus well as it enters the 21st century. "Today, our state's untapped resources are its people," he says. "The successful universities of the next century will use their research talents to make the development of these human resources their top priority."

Robert Irion, Barbara McKenna, and Jennifer McNulty also contributed to this story.