SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/409813
34 SportsTurf | November 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com Facility & Operations | By J. Bryan Unruh "P ublish or perish" is the long-standing mantra in academia. This statement has long served as the motivator for most university professors to keep their productivity up or find themselves looking elsewhere for employment. Not stated in that quip are the necessary ingredients to generate those publications. Today the game has changed and "grants, graduate students and publications" are the measures of success in colleges and universities. But, not just any will suffice—the source of the grant funding, the ultimate placement of the graduate student and the "quality" of the journals in which articles are published are now the metrics used to evaluate professors. Big grants required Grants with high rates of indirect costs (IDC) are preferred, often demanded, by university administrators. Federal grants are preferred (and expected at some universities) because their IDC rates can be as high as 50%. This means that if a researcher submits a federal grant for $250,000 through USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), for example, only $125,000 is actually available to the scientist to conduct the research. The other $125,000 remains with university administrators and is used to bridge the shortfall between state allocations to the uni- versity and the cost of doing business. The costs result from shared services, such as physical plant operation and mainte- nance, utility costs, sponsored projects administration, and depreciation or use allowance for buildings and equipment. The problem for turfgrass scientists is that most turfgrass research is "applied," meaning that the science has practical application, such as determining production inputs for sod production. Conversely, "basic" science focuses on gaining knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of a system (i.e., gaining an understand- ing of how genes code for a particular protein). Generally, applied research does not qualify for state or fed- eral competitive research grants, making it almost impossible for turfgrass scientists to obtain large, high IDC-generating grants. Additionally, turfgrass is not considered "food or fiber," further moving it down the scale of importance in the eyes of those reviewing grant proposals. An exception in recent years is the USDA-NIFA Specialty Crop Research Initiative where turf is specifically referenced in the request for proposals. Research on turfgrass breeding and sod production systems using municipal biosolids has been funded recently through this grant program. Applied sciences generally are funded by state commodity groups and industry associations, many of which are incor- porated as not-for-profit [501(c)3] associations. These groups historically have disallowed paying IDC to universities, but Uncertain times for pUblic research Given the applied nature of turfgrass research, the private sector will have to shoulder more of the responsibility for keeping universities focused on turfgrass Bryan Unruh, associate director of the University of Florida's West Florida Research and Education Center, surveyed turfgrass faculty from across the United States for perspectives on what some call a "brain drain" from traditional turfgrass teaching, research and Extension programs.