Tuesday, August 10, 1999
Physicist UC vice president
He has more than $1M in funding
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The University of Cincinnati has named a veteran faculty member as its new vice president for research and university dean for advanced studies.
Howard E. Jackson, a physicist who has taught at UC since 1974, will start Sept. 1. He has won awards for his teaching over the years and has more than $1 million in funding for research of his own.
“Howard is one of our star faculty,” UC President Joseph A. Steger said in a statement. “He has demonstrated that a productive scholar can also be an excellent teacher, and still work toward improving the institution on several fronts.”
In his new job, Dr. Jackson said, he will encourage research and scholarly efforts and work to “enhance the quality of the graduate student experience.”
Research funding is big business for UC, the Tristate's largest university. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1998, UC faculty and staff reported $116 million in outside financial support for their research and public service projects.
“Faculty here are talented and able, and sometimes they need resources to do something imaginative,” Dr. Jackson said in an interview. “That's where my office can help.”
Two of the largest new public service projects funded last year were “Safe, Drug-free Schools and Communities” by Donald Wagner in the College of Education with funding from the state of Ohio and “Earth Works: Virtual Reality tour of the ancient Ohio Valley burial mounds” by John Hancock in DAAP with fund ing from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Research funding also came from many different sources.
For example, Steven Boyce in surgery received a $300,000 Food and Drug Administration grant to study the effectiveness of cultured skin substitutes in treating burns. And Makram Suidan in environmental engineering received $700,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to find better ways to clean up oil spills along lake and ocean shorelines.
“You simply cannot do research in any of the areas like modern science or the modern medical areas without external funds,” Dr. Jackson said. “(Such research) creates a whole university environment so graduate students are trained in ways that are state of the art.”
Last year's record dollar-figure eclipsed the 1997 fiscal year's total outside funding of $109 million. In the four years before that, outside funding had remained steady at about $100 million.
Dr. Jackson will succeed Robert Gesteland, the university's vice president for research for the past six years. Dr. Gesteland plans to take a sabbatical during the coming year and hopes to return to his own research and teaching after that, he wrote recently.
During Dr. Gesteland's tenure, the university moved up in the National Science Foundation Research rankings from 85th in the nation to 53rd.
Dr. Jackson said the fact that the university's outside funding has risen in an increasingly competitive environment for such funds speaks well of UC's efforts.
How tough will it be for him to sustain that success?
“Call me in a year,” he said.
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