Kevin Chambliss

Kevin Chambliss examines Baylor’s research growth and future aspirations in this Baylor Connections. Dr. Chambliss, a longtime professor and researcher in Chemistry and Biochemistry, was named as Baylor’s Vice Provost for Research earlier this year. In this role, he works with faculty across the university in identifying funding sources, building partnerships and more. Additionally, his office will oversee a new area of research growth through the formation of a postdoc hiring program, which he explains on the program.
Transcript
DEREK SMITH:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors and more discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith and our guest today is Dr. Kevin Chambliss, Baylor's Vice Provost for Research. In that role, Dr. Chambliss serves as the Chief Research Officer of the University, working with faculty and administration from across the university. Assisting faculty and identifying funding sources, building partnerships, and more to enhance research and advance the university mission. Before moving to the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Dr. Chambliss served as a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor after joining the faculty in 2001 and he's with us here today on the program. Dr. Chambliss, thanks so much for joining us.
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Thanks for having me.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, it's good to have you here and so often I do, we'll give a rundown of what our guests do, but in every case you can tell us a little better what you do then I can. So if you were explaining what you do to a colleague or someone you know at church or another organization, what would you tell them you do?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
So the role of the Vice Provost for Research is a little bit broad and what I do varies depending on the audience. Within the university, I'm trying to serve as a form of assistance for faculty. I lead a fairly large staff that help faculty get grants out the door, manage grants when they get in the door and try to make their life easier where they can focus on the academic discipline and we can handle the research administration functions that go around that. External to the university, like a lot of other university leaders, I'm spending most of my time talking about our research vision. What are our goals over the next few years? What are we looking for in partners and trying to forge those relationships that can be mutually beneficial to both the partner and to the university in what we're trying to accomplish.
DEREK SMITH:
As we talk about Baylor, talk about Illuminate and to the push here as Baylor moves towards R1 research status, what are some of the benefits as you talk to people, as you talk about that external side of things, what are some of the benefits of letting other people know what we're doing?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, I think it's always great for people to know where you're headed, right? At the end of the day for a university to be successful in what they do, we've got to be successful internal, but having external partners and external support for the vision that we're pushing forward is critically important. And so just having them know what are our big goals, right? And how can they come alongside us? How can they support us? Be that financial, be that through connecting us with other potential partners or other relationships and just helping to tell our story external to the university can be a huge benefit.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with Dr. Kevin Chambliss. And so you've been in this role as interim and now officially as Office of Vice Provost for Research here. Over the last few months, what have you found you enjoy most about this role so far?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, I think first and foremost I enjoy being able to work with our faculty. Having been a faculty member at Baylor since 2001 and having played what I hope is an important role as a faculty member in helping us grow the research enterprise at Baylor. Knowing what some of the challenges are, where some of the hills that are tough to climb are, being in a position now to try to break down some of the barriers to try to continue to provide a high level of support to faculty and really just trying to be a change champion, right. Both within and beyond the university for pushing research forward is probably what I enjoy most.
DEREK SMITH:
What did you take away from that role as a professor of the intersection of teaching and research? You did both and many of our professors are doing both, so what did you take away from that into this role?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, I think it's a, I'm glad you asked the question. I think it's an important conversation to keep going. Oftentimes what I hear is people tend to believe that our increased research aspirations may have some negative impact on teaching. That's not at all the case. And when you ask, what did I take away? I think it's just how research enhances teaching. I'm a chemist by training. In the laboratory sciences, I think probably the highest level of teaching we have is in the laboratory, right? In the classroom you're often teaching fundamentals, you're teaching theories and you're teaching concepts, but it's not until you get into the research environment that those become real for students. And just watching that light bulb go off for a student, when they see the concept they learned in a class and suddenly they realize why it's useful in a practical sense. And how it can lead them to new discoveries and new knowledge. Recognizing that interplay, I think is the most important thing that I've taken away from having the time in that role. And then also in the role that I'm in now, while most of my time is spent being a voice that is research specific, I think having come from that background, it's always important to remember why we're here. Our core business is training students, creating leaders right across the world in their respected disciplines. And so I think just having that balance and making sure we keep that balance is an important takeaway and important thing to keep in mind.
DEREK SMITH:
You're in the office of Vice Provost for Research and maybe student engagement. That idea of engaged learning is something that other people might even think more about than you, but is there that tie in there as you think about what you do?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Absolutely. Our role is, while there's an Office of Engaged Learning that's within the college of arts and sciences, our role is still to provide that conduit, right? For students to participate in research. For them to learn, for them to grow. And I think at the heart of every university is lifelong learning, not just for the students but for the faculty and for us to all do that in an engaged way. Research projects provide probably second to none conduit for living that out.
DEREK SMITH:
This is Baylor Connections. We're visiting with Dr. Kevin Chambliss, Baylor's Vice Provost for Research. And we talk about you joining the Baylor faculty in 2001, but I know higher education has played a role in your life for a long time. Your parents, both educators at a Ouachita Baptist University. What did they teach and how did growing up in that environment shape you?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Great question. And it's true. I literally grew up in that environment. I literally grew up on that campus, probably spent as much time in their office and walk in the halls of academic buildings as a child, as I did anything else. My mother had degrees in French and Comparative Literature and so she was more the humanities side of campus. My dad had degrees in Math and Statistics, ultimately an EDD, and he was in a school of education. And somehow I ended up in Science, right? And so I think one of the most important things I learned from them is just to embrace learning, right? Independent of the subject. And I'm very thankful that I had a liberal arts education. I'm very thankful that I had a Christian liberal arts education. Christian higher education is obviously a landscape I'm very comfortable in. I've been in it for most of my life. And just the value of what a university is, the role of a student, the role of a faculty member and just the relationship that they forge in lifelong learning, right? Learning new things about people, about subjects, about science, about literature and how they all relate so that we can make an impact, right? In just about any setting, any conversation has really shaped a lot of why I do what I do every day.
DEREK SMITH:
So your like a preacher's kid in a way. It actually turns you hopefully closer more towards obviously what they were doing.
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Right, absolutely. And I mean it's interesting how that played out in sort of my growth path. If you had asked me when I was 18 years old that I want to spend the rest of my life on the university campus, I would have said no. Like a lot of kids, I had a different idea of what I wanted to do at 18 then what I ended up doing. But I think your analogy to a preacher's kid is probably right on target, right? Baylor compared to Ouachita has given me a chance to kind of take that Christian higher ed landscape from a small four year college to now a university that aspires to be a research institution with robust graduate programs and externally funded projects. And it was a great place to grow up. I think it's prepared me well for the role in the place where I am now.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with Dr. Kevin Chambliss and Dr. Chambliss, you talk about that research side of things. And as Baylor aspires to that R1 status and on the program and certainly in other forums through Baylor, we've talked about what some of those metrics look like. But as far as where we are now, and it's a broad question, but what can you tell us about, sort of an overview of what Baylor research looks like right now because that foundation is there, what are we building on?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, so I would say we're as strong as we've ever been. Baylor probably made its first verbal push into the research landscape about the time I was hired. We started with Vision 2012, we've since gone through Profuturists and now Illuminate. And I think all of those university visions are extensions of the same theme. We've had consistent improvement and consistent growth in the metrics around research since 2001 so we're starting from a strong position. If we think about research metrics, right? There's several that are important. One that everyone tends to go to in an academic setting are our peer reviewed publications, right? Baylor is very strong in that regard. We've consistently improved over the last decade or two and we're continuing to improve. We're set to have more and higher quality publications this year than we've had in any year in the past. And that trajectory needs to continue. Citations to research, so how others view your work is also a very important metric. Baylor's very strong in that regard. If you look across the university, our citations per publication on a per capita basis are consistent with many of the universities that we aspire to be. Many R1 institutions that are there were very strong in the humanities at Baylor. Will continue to do that. A big metric there is books, right? And we're very strong in that metric. We'll continue to be.
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Where we're not as strong as we'd like to be in the future is really an externally funded research. And so while we have a good foundation in terms of the metric, that's really the research metric that we're going to be trying to drive forward as we continue to go down this path. It's not that we don't do it, we do it very well, particularly in the area of foundation funded research because of our Christian mission. There's a number of foundations that our mission resonates with and that we're able to tap into that funding. What we really hope to grow is our federal funding portfolio. Some of that will happen as we continue to make investments in STEM disciplines, science and engineering. And I think we're in a great place to spring forward into the vision of Illuminate that President Livingstone has set out and I expect nothing but continued growth in all of those metrics.
DEREK SMITH:
As you talk about that external funding, what are some of the ways when you work with faculty you help maybe match research with some of those opportunities or applications for that?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, so I have an office of research and development or a research and development team within my office. And one of the things that they've done is developed curated lists where for a given discipline, they've gone in and said, here are the funding opportunities for research in this space. And that's still pretty high level. At the end of the day, faculty have to get in the weeds, do some of their own hunting for the right funding opportunities. But part of our role is trying to help them do that. To make the right match. There's really two approaches, right? And it's a balance in terms of how faculty find funding opportunities. One is to say, what is my passion? What is it that I like to research? And then try to find a funding outlet for that particular intellectual pursuit. Another approach that faculty often commonly take is to say what skill set do I have? And if you take a skill set, it's sometimes easier to match that with funding priorities and let that help shape what you determine the intellectual pursuit to be. And so there's wins on both side of that coin and depending on discipline and even down to the individual faculty member, it's really one of those two approaches or some combination of that that ultimately result in that right match between idea and funding source.
DEREK SMITH:
This is Baylor Connections. We are visiting with Baylor with Vice Provost for Research, Dr. Kevin Chambliss. And Dr. Chambliss, we kind of go back and forth between some of the specifics and that vision of the Christian research university. And as you work with faculty, obviously you're trying to hit some metrics, but you're also, there's a higher mission with what we're doing and that idea of being a top to a tier one Christian research university. I've talked about research marked by quality, impact and visibility. What are some of the ways either with your office or just from working with faculty that you see that higher calling, if you will, sort of infusing the specifics of what you're working with them on?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, so it varies a lot by discipline, right? Ultimately when we think about tier one, that's really a public recognition of a university's contributions, right? In a research space. And what we ultimately want is a seat at the table in the world's largest problems, right? We believe that because of our Christian mission, that's another facet that animates the way that we pursue knowledge. Sometimes it animates the specific problems that we pursue. And so there's some disciplines where Christian research could be, what is the history of Christianity, for example. That could be a place where Christian research is very animated by our faith. If you take it over to my discipline, chemistry, there's really no such thing as Christian chemistry. Chemistry is chemistry. But because of our Christian face, it gives us an additional lens. As we look at problems, we learn more about God's creation. And I really think it's sort of that combination of pursuing excellence. I remember hearing Brett Dalton talk in a conversation a few months back that we had on campus. That tier one is where we have to go. Because as you look at the Christian faith, right? God called for excellence. He didn't say, hey, let's do this halfway. We need to do things all the way to tier one. And really I think that's probably the best way that that gets animated in what we do each day.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with Dr. Kevin Chambliss and Dr. Chambliss, so we saw it recently, the announcement of a postdoc hiring program here at Baylor. And we talked to Dr. Brickhouse a little bit about this a few weeks back. But with that, I know a lot of that work will be taking place in your office. What will that look like to be getting that and just kind of helping grow that over the next three years?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, so what we've done is we've decided to make an investment in postdocs as you've said, really at an unprecedented level for an institution like Baylor. And as I've talked to colleagues at other places, I think even in an aggressive level for some of the institutions that we aspire to be. But we've set a goal to hire 65 postdocs over the next three years. We plan to do this hiring roughly 20, 20, and 25 individuals in three successive years. These will be three year appointments, so each postdoc would be on campus for three years or at least each mentor would have three years of funding. It's possible that you could get a postdoc in two years down the road. They land a permanent position and that's a win, but they would then have funding for a third year to backfill that position. And what we really think this can be do in a rather quick fashion, help change the culture of what we're doing. As a researcher, there's almost no more valuable tool than an experienced set of hands. I love working with new graduate students, but graduate students are most successful right before they move on to a postdoc. And it's a catch 22 right? We all want to send people out into the world, but it often feels like wow, just when we got right on the cusp of something interesting, now you have a new student to train and that's part of why we do what we, but what postdocs can do is provide experienced hands and clear expertise that can help bridge research trajectories, right? Where you're not always going back to the beginning and ramping up and then starting over and ramping up and starting over. They can help it be a continuous climb.
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
And so we're excited about that. Not only can they make our best current and future faculty more productive when they leave Baylor, right? If they go on to faculty positions at other institutions. This can also have a tremendous impact on our tier one aspirations in terms of the rest of the world knowing what we're doing at Baylor in the quality of what we're doing. And then those same postdocs going on carrying the green and gold to their next position, their next institution, and starting that cycle over again.
DEREK SMITH:
And I know professors across campus can apply through your office and that's a process ongoing throughout the year. And is that all across campus? All different departments?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
That's correct. Any tenured or tenure track faculty member can apply for a postdoc. We expect to make placements across a variety of disciplines, different schools, colleges and really in this one program have a lever that can help raise the research profile broadly defined at Baylor.
DEREK SMITH:
This is Baylor Connections. We're visiting with Dr. Kevin Chambliss and Dr Chambliss I'm going to ask you here in the final couple of minutes, one academic question, one kind of broad academic question, then a one that's not as we close it out. So what I ask you first, what are you most excited about during this time in Baylor's life? You've been here a while, you kind of seen that growth. What are you most excited about right now?
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
Well, as I've spoken about before, the aspiration to become a Christian research university is not new for us. I've lived that throughout most of my time at Baylor, but I'm particularly excited right now with the alignment that we have in leadership through President Livingstone, Provost Brickhouse. Brett Dalton is our Chief Business Officer. Probably unlike any other time since I've been here, it seems that the alignment there behind the goal, behind the mission is as good as anything I can remember. And so having an opportunity to be a part of that, having an opportunity to lead in that climate is extremely exciting.
DEREK SMITH:
Well that is exciting and we'll look forward to talking. We've been able to talk to many faculty members about that and look forward to more faculty and administrators on the program. Kind of sharing their hand in those aspects as well. And the nonacademic question, Dr. Chambliss is, I understand another talent you have is on the musical side of the ledger. Could you share with us after we've been talking about all these high level things and tell us about your, what you play, what style of music and how that avocational side of things.
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
You may be giving me too much credit using the word talent Derek, but I do enjoy playing guitar. It's an instrument I've played probably since I was 11 or 12 years old. Have played a variety of styles of music over the years. I grew up in the eighties and nineties and so my first foray into this was probably through hairbands and hard rock, like a lot of kids that grew up in that era. But being from Arkansas, I've always had a love for country music. I play in a country band now, have also played quite a bit in cowboy church. My wife and I live on a ranch about an hour outside of Waco. And so that part of life is just a great break from academic culture and it gives me a chance to do something that's new and different and exciting.
DEREK SMITH:
So we might get to see you somewhere out playing in a cowboy hat, boots, and a different side of things from the chemist.
KEVIN CHAMBLISS:
It's certainly a possibility and I would love to see you at a show sometime.
DEREK SMITH:
Well that sounds good. Maybe to do a whole musical show here on a Baylor Connections one of these days have you in studio. Well, Dr. Chambliss, thanks so much. It's been great to visit with you. Dr. Kevin Chambliss, Baylor's Vice Provost for Research. Our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you can hear this and other programs online, baylor.edu/connections. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.