Editor's Note: This is the third story in a five-part series examining Project Emmitt and its legacy for UTD and the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.
Part 3: The best and brightest
Yves Chabal sits at his desk on the third floor of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Laboratory (NSERL). This is prime real estate on the UTD campus, a corner office in the newest and most costly building on campus, surrounded by some of the school's top researchers in engineering and physical science.
Chabal, who holds the Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Nanoelectronics and heads the materials science and engineering department, was hired in August 2007. Although many things factored into his decision to come to UTD, he said a state-of-the-art research facility was foremost among them.
"I was at Bell Labs before, I was at Rutgers, and there's no comparison. NSERL is absolutely outstanding," Chabal said. "In my mind, it was one of the main successes of (Project) Emmitt."
The construction of NSERL, the four-story, blue-green building on the north end of campus, cost $100 million. Most of it, $85 million, came from bonds issued as part of Project Emmitt. Opened in June 2007, the building was one of the cornerstones of the five-year, $300 million investment into the Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.
The building was the most tangible result of Project Emmitt, but it was part of the broader goal of attracting top faculty to UTD, said Bob Helms, former engineering dean and Project Emmitt's lead architect. Specifically, Helms sought to expand the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty from 78 in 2003 to 120 by the end of Project Emmitt.
"You can hire assistant professors who are right out of school, but in fact we really needed to attract some additional leaders who would be full professors, maybe with endowed chairs after their name, to really help us lead into the future," Helms said.
In August 2003, just two months after Project Emmitt was announced, the Jonsson School brought Bruce Gnade, Moon Kim and Robert Wallace to UTD from the materials science program at the University of North Texas.
Together, the three helped establish the materials science and engineering department at UTD, which began granting graduate degrees in spring 2006, Kim said.
Wallace is now a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the 11th professor at UTD to receive the honor. Kim is the principal investigator of the Texas FUSION project, which has netted $14.4 million in research funding.
Gnade, now vice president for research, said Project Emmitt was the deciding factor in their move to UTD.
"It was obvious that things were going to grow a lot in engineering and we wanted to be a part of that," Gnade said. "If it had not been for Emmitt, we'd probably be at (UT) Arlington."
Attracting nationally recognized research faculty is not cheap, Helms said. It requires a significant initial investment just to provide the laboratory space and equipment professors need. If an endowed chair is unavailable, the cost of which is covered by interest payments from an endowment, faculty salaries must also be factored in.
As part of Project Emmitt, the UT System allocated $50 million to the Jonsson School, much of which went to providing new faculty with the resources to equip their labs. Startup costs were also covered by some of a separate $50 million provided by the state from the Texas Enterprise Fund.
Salaries for incoming professors were covered by an allotment of $15 million from expected increases in tuition revenue.
Myron Salamon, dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, came to UTD in 2006 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When he arrived, Helms put $4 million in Emmitt funds at his disposal.
Salamon said that in his two years at UTD, he has used the funds to hire a new head of the biology department, a new head of the geosciences department and a senior lecturer in physics. For a senior researcher, equipment alone can cost more than $1 million, he said.
After five years, the Jonnson School has fallen short of the goal of 120 tenured or tenure-track faculty Helms established at the outset. Currently, the tally is 97.
Helms said he might have been able to hire more faculty to reach the goal, but chose not to.
"You might say (I) didn't hire as many faculty as fast as planned," Helms said. "I'll plead guilty. But in some ways I'm glad we hired the number we did because those were the ones with the kind of quality we needed."
Gnade said Project Emmitt has put the Jonsson School in position to continue to attract quality faculty. He said UTD could potentially benefit from the economic downturn in the long run, as other states slash funding for higher education, and many top researchers look for greener pastures.
Kenneth O, an electrical engineering professor, was awarded a TI Distinguished Chair in February. He comes to UTD from the University of Florida where the university's budget was cut by $47 million for the 2008-09 fiscal year. A further cut of more than $70 million is expected for the next fiscal year, according to the University of Florida Web site.
Dean of Engineering Mark Spong said the Jonsson School will continue to pursue top faculty despite the end of Project Emmitt. He said bringing in quality researchers is an investment, but that faculty hired over the past five years have already proved their worth.
Last October, Chabal won the Davisson-Germer Prize from the American Physical Society. The prize is given annually for groundbreaking work in surface or atomic physics.
Although the award was for research done during Chabal's 22 years with Bell Labs, Helms said it confirmed the Jonsson School was going in the right direction.
"This is one of the best and brightest guys in the world in nanoelectronics," Helms said. "We put together the program that would be attractive to him, he comes here, and then shortly thereafter, our good decision is acknowledged by the American Physical Society."
A brief sampling of faculty hired under Emmitt
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Yves Chabal "The momentum Emmitt has given the university is absolutely definite. If you look at the hires in the past three or four years, they're all very good, and the university's reputation has grown. From the outside, you really hear about the momentum." |
Myron Salamon "There are two things you can do as an academic administrator: You can just manage things as they are, or you can build something new. What I found at Illinois was that we were always trying to deal with cutbacks. To come into a young university like this one was an opportunity I couldn't find at Illinois." |
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Moon Kim "Before I joined UTD, I was at the University of North Texas. There I was trying to set up a new infrastructure, but resources were not available for me to do that. With Emmitt funding, UTD becomes a very ideal place for me to go to set up a new program and facilities." |
John Hansen "At Colorado, I spent probably six months trying to hire a senior lecturer. One of the faculty we recruited (at UTD), it was determined that they needed a big piece of equipment. In about half an hour, I was able to get a commitment from the dean's office to go after that big piece of equipment." |
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Mark Spong "Emmitt was really a unique event. I didn't see it anywhere else in the country. The fact that they had a big pot of money just to support the Jonsson School was a unique period in its history. It would have been better for me if it was still going on, but a lot of great things were done." |
Rashaunda Henderson "Project Emmitt didn't have anything to do with it until the offers came. The other universities couldn't even give me anything to buy one piece of equipment. I realized you need a nice startup package, and that's what Emmitt provided us with." |
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