Ohio State will get some help in its efforts to attract top-notch faculty.
Last week the House and Senate passed a bill allocating $50 million as an initiative to be used in university research.
Three million of this will go toward four Eminent Scholars Programs that were approved last summer but lacked funding. One of them is here at OSU.
Provost Ed Ray said the program began in the mid-1980’s to support the endowment of chaired professor positions at state universities.
“The idea is that the state puts up some money for top-ranked professors to focus on specific researches,” said Randall Edwards of Ohio Board of Regents.
Two hundred experts from outside the state come in and review each university in an extensive review process, along with two separate review panels and a site review panel.
“It is to fund programs that are already outstanding and to provide them with academic and research excellence,” said Harry Andrist, director of research and graduate programs at Ohio Board of Regents. “It is a very careful selection process. Only the best come to the top.”
The design of the program is to improve Ohio’s economic development initiatives and make Ohio more economically competitive.
“The program is intended to provide faculty leadership to leading programs that are important to the future of the state economy,” Ray said.
The additional money provided by this bill will go to four scholars who were excluded last time because of a lack of funds, one of which is in the nanotechnology area here at OSU.
“The money included in the budget correction bill for the Eminent Scholars Program will be used to pay for the four awards that were approved last summer by the Ohio Board of Regents,” Edwards said.
The board has also requested additional money to go towards these four programs.
“We also have requested $6 million in capital funds in the capital appropriations bill, which has not yet been introduced in the General Assembly,” Edwards said. “We do not know whether that money will be approved, but if it is, presumably some of that could go to these four Eminent Scholars Programs.”
This money is important to these programs, Edwards said.
“The research universities use this money to update labs and purchase state-of-the-art equipment,” he said, “the type of infrastructure that is key in attracting top-flight researchers to their campus.”
Ray said in an e-mail response that he is pleased on behalf of OSU with receiving funding for another program.
“We believe that this is an excellent program based on the merit of proposals and the promise of the programs that they support,” Ray said. “We are very excited about having financial support for another Eminent Scholars award.”
