COLUMN: Research shouldn’t turn university into a business
Most weeks at USU seem to have a theme. Mortar Board Week. Kick Butts Week. National Drunk, Drugged and Drowsy Driving “3-D” Awareness Week. Personally, I think it’s just a little overdone. If every week is dedicated to something, students stop caring about any of the weeks.
It’s like the lighting of the “A.” It seems hard to find a day when that thing isn’t lit. Most of that can be attributed to our successful athletic teams, but if we give a standing ovation to every performance out there, it just takes away a little bit of the specialness for the really great ones.
So it goes with our penchant for dedicating weeks. With so many out there, the really important ones sort of lose their flavor. I think just last week it was HASS Week, Business Week and A-Day. Could someone explain how an A-Day can last a whole week?
Not that I’m complaining. I got a few Creamies out of the ordeal.
Oh yes, and last week was Research Week to boot. It was the first year that Research Week has been held here at USU, though since forever, we’ve been the state’s official land-grant university. USU along with the University of Utah are the two state-recognized research institutions and a significant portion of our budgets are directed at such endeavors, and I believe rightly so.
Of course, being a research university can have its drawbacks. Nothing can be more frustrating for a student than a professor that just doesn’t seem to relate to students because his/her focus is always on that person’s research rather than our education. Research efforts by the university should never trump the real reason why students come to college, to get an education.
I knew the former dean of students at a small college. Upon interviewing candidates for an opening as a professor, they called one of the finalist’s former employers, a much larger university, to ask for a reference. The former employer responded that the candidate had been fired because, “he never spent any time doing research, he was always out working with students.”
The smart dean realized this was just the man for the job. He was quickly hired and has been there ever since. They wanted to hire a teacher, and not a researcher. Too often, the opposite is what happens.
Research is important. But it’s not everything. Thanks to the abundant research conducted by the university’s faculty, USU gains a bit more recognition, and with that, our degree shoulders a little more weight in the workplace.
For the past year or so, I have worked at the USU Research Foundation. Honestly, I don’t understand a lot of what goes on there. I just work as a lowly accountant. It takes all I’ve got just to remember debits on the left, credits on the right.
But I do know that the Space Dynamics Laboratory (part of the foundation) employs more than 200 scientists, engineers and professionals, not to mention more than 100 students. They work on projects ranging from improving weather-predicting equipment to growing vegetables in space for the international space station and its cosmonauts. It is a program recognized internationally for its expertise in the field of engineering. Just being loosely affiliated with the university makes the rest of us look a whole lot smarter.
And the Space Dynamics Laboratory is just the start of USU’s research activities. Research brings countless opportunities into the state and onto our very own campus thanks to the talents of our professors and those employed alongside them.
But I hope that at least some of that research is focused to improve the quality of our educations.
Nothing could be better than research opportunities to apply what we’ve actually been learning in the classroom. If done right, I believe it can provide an ideal capstone to any student’s education. If not, it turns our university into a business rather than a school.
Either way though, I think it deserves a good lighting of the “A.”
Jon Cox is a junior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to jcox@cc.usu.edu.