Although faculty members have requested that $300,000 be reinstated immediately to one research support fund, the University will maintain its decision to temporarily reduce the funding, which is a source of supplemental funding for research and travel.
The reduction, which leaves the fund at about $100,000 this fiscal year, has limited some researchers’ opportunities to expand their work, according to some professors.
The Arts and Sciences Council requested in November that the administration reinstate the $300,000 to the fund, but administrators could not do so, said Alvin Crumbliss, dean of the faculty of the arts and sciences. The fund—which is a source for additional archival research and conference travel and participation—represents less than 1 percent of the annual research expenditures in Trinity College. Traditionally, research spending in Trinity totals more than $50 million—a number that is not expected to change in the coming fiscal year, Crumbliss said.
“No student programs or classes were affected by the diminished funding of the A&S Research Council funds,” Crumbliss wrote in an e-mail Dec. 10. “ I admit there is an effect on faculty travel to professional society meetings and small research grants to faculty.”
George McLendon, former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and dean of Trinity College, ordered this cut before leaving Duke last Spring, and this is not the first year the research fund has been cut. The research council received approximately $400,000 in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, but this was reduced by $300,000 for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, Crumbliss said. Trinity College external grants, however, bolstered total research spending to approximately $50 million in both years, he added.
Crumbliss noted that the administration will reinstate the funds “as soon as possible” and that he plans to seek advice and input from the faculty throughout the construction of the 2012 budget. Scott De Marchi, chair of the Faculty Committee on Research, which normally administers the fund, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“In most cases, it’s not the research that is constrained, but the condition of doing it,” said Dean of Humanities Srinivas Aravamudan, director of the Franklin Humanities Institute and English professor. “For example, one might have to decide what particular trips might be absolutely crucial and which ones you could go without for a year. It’s a readjustment in the short term.”
Humanities professors said they generally depend on external funding and individual grants, though they noted that the recent cuts will affect certain areas of their work. In general, humanities professors have had to rely on Duke-administered grants more than science professors, who have more access to funding outside Duke.
“[The cuts] will undoubtedly limit the ability of humanists to do on-site research and go to archives,” said political science professor Michael Gillespie in a Dec. 10 e-mail. “It will also affect their ability to attend conferences and deliver papers [and] probably also limit their ability to hire graduate students to do research in the summer—this will further reduce our support for graduate students.”
This recent cut to the research support fund is just another iteration of similar administrative measures affecting the humanities, said Thomas Pfau, Eads Family Professor of English and German. Pfau noted that the independent research budgets of Arts and Sciences faculty members—which are part of their contracts—have been previously reduced.
“Two and a half years ago, we were unilaterally informed that the University would only disperse 85 percent of what they had promised,” Pfau said. “We were told the balance that was being held back would be restored—at some later point.”
Pfau added that the administration has no immediate plans to restore the individual research budgets.
“We’re losing on both ends,” he said.
David Aers, James B. Duke Professor of English and religious studies, said that the reduction of the research grant in his contract has had an impact on his work.
“I think these things are very individual,” Aers said. “I have a research grant and I use that for what I need. That was cut a year ago, and that wasn’t very good.”
Still, Aravamudan said the recent cut has not put research on hold, but merely caused faculty members to prioritize their goals and allocate their funding carefully.
“It’s not catastrophic,” Aravamudan said. “What we’re doing right now is being very judicious—short-term colonizing to ensure that the long-term effects stay robust.”
But Pfau said the reduction in conference travel could pose problems across the humanities faculty. Although the cuts to this particular fund do not affect him directly, he added that they have had negative effects on professors requiring supplemental funding.
“Most places where I go invite me and pay all my expenses,” he said. “The majority of my research funds are spent on books and some computing equipment. Faculty that have research assistants are going to have more of a problem.”
Crumbliss said concerns regarding the Faculty Committee on Research funding cuts have been addressed through the Arts and Sciences Council. He has not received personal e-mails or had individual conversations with faculty members.
“Given that we still have constrained resources, we will have to make some difficult budgetary choices and this is one of them,” Crumbliss said. “These are tough economic times and we must face some tough decisions regarding the relationship between our priorities and how we use our available funds.”
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