Kevin Chambliss and Susan Stearsman

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 today we are talking at Baylor Research. Baylor University's research enterprise has enjoyed tremendous growth in recent years through the strategic plan of Illuminate, illustrated most notably through the university's attainment of R1 research recognition last December. Baylor's Office of the Vice Provost for Research has worked with faculty across campus advancing research efforts and enhancing infrastructure to support this growth. Kevin Chambliss serves as Baylor's Vice Provost for Research and Susan Stearsman is Baylor's Associate Vice Provost for Research. This weekend marks National Research Administrator Day and today we'll highlight the work behind the scenes that has supported important milestones in Baylor research. We really have a lot to celebrate this year, Kevin and Susan. Thanks for coming on, jumping on to talk about it today.

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Thanks for having us, Derek. Thank you.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Thank you.

DEREK SMITH:

Well, we are celebrating National Research Administrator Day, the day this show airs, as I said, September 23, and we're going to dive really into talking about your staff. Let's start big picture. You've got a great team that's working tirelessly to make things happen. If you each have 30 seconds, and Kevin I'll start with you, 30 seconds or a minute just to describe what their impact at Baylor means to you, how would you do that?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Oh, wow. Great question. And what I would say, Derek, is they're a tireless team of people who have bent over backwards to try to help faculty and others within the university be successful in reaching the goals that we've set out. And I'm sure we'll unpack this a little bit over the course of the next few minutes, but things have grown so rapidly at Baylor and scaled so quickly that we've been trying to grow the people behind the scenes to support that scale as quickly as we can. At times it's been challenging, but it clearly, while certainly faculty play the leading role in what we do, the growth we've experienced wouldn't have happened without the folks on our staff behind the scenes helping make that happen, and I'm so grateful for all the work that they do.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Yeah, I would say our team has really focused on bringing a level of expertise to this space that maybe we didn't have 10 or 15 years ago. We've grown the team in number, but I think also really in depth and breadth of what they can do. And that really has a leveraging effect for the faculty. We're walking beside them with a collegial relationship to really let us handle where we have expertise in the administrative and compliance requirements and really let the faculty focus on carrying out their research

DEREK SMITH:

Visiting with Kevin Chambliss and Susan Stearsman, and Baylor has purposefully and strategically invested in growing the Office of the Vice Provost for Research in recent years. And for people who don't really know, how would you describe your office, Kevin, and what falls in within your lane?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

No, it's a good question too, Derek, and we have a broad portfolio that ranges from tech transfer and engagements with industry to space and how do we grow out lab structures to support the research enterprise, to a variety of research administration functions that I'll let Susan unpack a little bit. But another thing that our office does that I really appreciate because we're in the Provost's office, we have the opportunity to be a close partner with the Provost in planning research strategy and collaboration with Nancy and with our deans and how do our hiring plans, how do the decisions we make in doing that grow the overall footprint of research within the institution? And so that's the broad swath. A big piece of that is the research admin piece. And I'll let Susan unpack that a little bit.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Now research administration is really facilitating the relationship between where the research happens, that's with our faculty, and with the funding agencies. And so we essentially represent Baylor to external agencies and make sure that things are handled professionally and consistently and accurately and compliantly, all of those things. We also, to carry on with some of what Kevin said, in a similar way to partnering inside the Provost's office, we also spend a great deal of our days partnering with the other administrative units at Baylor also to make sure that processes are smooth and people can do what they need to do and carry out the research.

DEREK SMITH:

I think it's easy, Susan, certainly from the marketing standpoint, you see a press release or the news that a professor won a great grant and most of us don't realize just how much work goes into it. We're going to talk about the different parts of the award process, but what aspects do most people maybe not quite understand about just how much planting and watering goes into that seed sprouting, if you will, of a grant award?

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Wow, that's a great question. I think it starts with an idea and often I think it starts a lot earlier than people realize. It's not just you pull together an idea and send a letter off. You have to bake that idea into something that you might say is fundable or collaborate with people who can help you get there. I think there's a lot of internal scientific support that happens before anybody's even talking about putting an idea out to a funding agency. Once you're ready to do that, though, you really need someone who understands what that process looks like and really help you navigate, wow, what does this agency want? How do we fill out all the forms? There are questions and codes and terminology that most people who aren't in the profession of research administration don't really understand. And so again, working with our team to carry out some of those tasks is really a necessary part of the process. Then it needs some compliance eyes to make sure that we're checking all the boxes that we need to check before it goes out the door. And then I think submitting the proposal really is that moment in time where you're asking for someone to support your life's work. But the real work begins at post award, once you've gotten that grant. Now you have to carry out the grant and there's a whole series of steps that go on that end as well. So it's not just getting the proposal. It's also then meeting the terms of the agreement.

DEREK SMITH:

Maybe I can overdo an athletic analogy, but when you think about if you're competing on big stages as well, it sounds like what you described, there's elements of coaching, there's elements of the compliance office that helps athletics follow NCAA rules, make sure that is are dotted or ts are crossed, a little bit science, a little bit art, and a lot of maybe helping faculty like an athlete, get to where they want to go.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

I think that's a great analogy.

DEREK SMITH:

And it's great work and we've seen the fruits of it as we talk with Kevin Chambliss and Susan Stearsman. And Kevin we've had several months now to, in a lot of ways, celebrate and internalize R1 as an institution. [inaudible] and your team, whether in patent F or spread out, a lot of people working remotely, what has that meant? What has that meant to you all to be able to share in and celebrate that?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Well, it was really a little bit of a surprise to us. I think we expected it was going to happen a little bit later. And so once we got over the initial, almost shock, that we had reached this achievement, I think there was a great sense of satisfaction. As we've talked about, some days and what we do is tough sledding. At times, it's hard work and being able to get a victory out of that in the way of being recognized as an R1 institution was truly a team win. You've heard me say that before, but certainly among our team. I think everybody was pretty excited. Susan, I remember you sharing a moment with me when you all actually got the news. That might be worth sharing for the audience.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Yeah. We were all together, almost all of us together and somebody got the email and there was a big screen that went up. We had to stop the meeting that we were in and we really did take a few minutes and really just celebrate it, had that feeling of a goal that you've set and that you've really been working toward. We made it. And I don't think it was too much longer after that. Maybe the weight of it set in. Now we have work to do. An R1 is an uphill road. And I mean that in a very positive way. There's work to do to maintain that. And so that's what we're doing now. We're going about the business of keeping that goal alive.

DEREK SMITH:

Well, actually that sets up the next question, I think, well. We celebrate R1 and it's a great achievement, but we've heard a lot of people, whether President Livingstone, Dr. Brickhouse or in your office, talk about the fact R1 was never the final destination. It's an exciting benchmark, but not a finish line. Susan, I'll start with you. To make that the case, what are some ways that we are working to support that growth to not just scale up to be R1 now, but to continue to grow in the future?

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

There's so much. R1 is a certain designation that means a great deal to us, but there are also many aspects of being at a university that go into making that true. So all kinds of things like, we're about to kick off a system implementation that will help us to navigate that proposal and award process. It's a big lift for our team. It's going to be a great impact on campus. Really give a lot of transparency and management capability in our grant portfolio that we don't have today, but there are many projects like that where we're continuing to grow as an institution.

DEREK SMITH:

And Kevin, when we talk about infrastructure, what does that mean as it relates to Baylor and research growth?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Well, I think that's a great question. And I think it also builds on the question that you had just asked Susan. Infrastructure can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but the reality is it's a pretty broad work. It can mean anything from new policies to procedures, to protocols, to people, to physical space, to the equipment that occupies that space, even down to culture at some level. It's all part of the backbone or the infrastructure that's ultimately needed to not only support a research enterprise, but in our case at Baylor to sustain our R1 status and to continue to grow, not just as another R1 institution. But if we look back, the goal is to be the preeminent Christian research university. And that's a wonderful goal to have in front of us. I think everybody's excited about reaching it and growing all aspects of that term infrastructure that I just talked about, are going to be critical to us reaching that destination

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

And Derek, I would say a grant, Kevin and I talk about this a lot. A grant is really a microcosm of academic activity at a university, all of the processes that go on around a research project at some point walk through a grant. And so there has to be a depth of understanding, not just on my team, but also across the institution about how every action ultimately can impact something that deals with federal funding or state funding or other agency type of funding. So growing that expertise and awareness is something that we're focused on as well.

DEREK SMITH:

This is Baylor Connections. We are visiting with Kevin Chambliss, Baylor's Vice Provost for Research and Susan Stearsman, Associate Vice Provost for Research. And Kevin, I want to ask you, you've served on the faculty here at Baylor for many years before becoming Vice Provost for Research in 2018, and you've interacted on both sides. So how would you describe the ways that faculty interact with your office and how you've seen that grow in recent years?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Well, I think some of it goes back to what Susan said at the top of the program. One of the things that we've worked hard to do is try to grow the level of expertise within our office. That's always a work in progress for everybody. I don't think anybody ever says, "Hey, I know all I need to know today." But compared to say 10 or 15, 20 years ago, when I arrived at Baylor, the scope, the scale and the level of expertise available to our faculty today is dramatically different than it was when I arrived at Baylor at the beginning of this journey towards R1. And as a faculty member, what you really want to be able to do, at least when I was a faculty member, what I really wanted to be able to do was focus on the research. I wanted to mentor my students. I wanted to talk about the results that were coming out of the lab, maybe work on the next paper, maybe work on the next grant. What I did not want to do is think about how do I order all the supplies or who's paying the bills to the vendors, or honestly, this is probably bad for me to say publicly, I didn't even want to balance my checkbook so to speak. Once I got the grant, I just wanted to do the work. And so what we're really trying to do is set up an infrastructure of people, of processes, of knowledge on the administrative side of the house that free up faculty to have their focus and their time really be spent on coming up with the big ideas, training the next generation of students that are going to spread Baylor's green and gold far beyond the confines of the university. And I love the trajectory we're on. I think we've made great strides in moving towards that goal. And I expect this to continue to improve in that way in the days and months ahead.

DEREK SMITH:

Susan, as Kevin describes, being able to focus on the research, that's obviously each faculty member brings his or her own unique approach to solving big problems. Obviously there's some what you call administrative work or process-related work that every faculty member would have to do. How do you walk alongside them through that and free them up to as much as they can, as Kevin described, focusing on the research, the students, the work that they do?

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Yeah. It's funny as Kevin was listing off those things that he doesn't like to do, those are the things that my team loves to do.

DEREK SMITH:

So it works well then.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

It does. It's intended to be a collegial relationship. The research admin team, they are administrative, there are a lot of purely administrative tasks that need to happen. It is a profession and they do bring, using the word expertise, they bring that expertise knowing what needs to be done and being able to read through a scope of work and understand which wires we're tripping in terms of what needs to happen. Does this need regulatory review? Does this need prior approval from an agency? Is this something that this agency would even allow? How are we going to fund this if the agency doesn't provide enough funding? All of those administrative questions are really what we're there to help with and really relieve the faculty of having to think through those things. It's collaborative, it's iterative, but that's really our wheelhouse.

DEREK SMITH:

Visiting with Kevin Chambliss and Susan Stearsman. And Susan earlier, you talked about the steps of the grant process, a bill becomes a law can help us picture how an idea becomes a grant. You also mentioned compliance. How can we outside of your world envision what compliance means when you're talking about big research projects?

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Yeah. Very broad. You might think of it, there's an old cartoon actually, of someone coming in with a piece of paper saying, "Hey, you got your grant. Grant got funded. There are a few strings attached." And the image is a piece of paper with a thousand strings trailing behind. And that's maybe how you think about it. There are terms and conditions that are required when we take external funding in order to carry out our scopes of work. And then there are additional requirements just as an institution, because we're R1, we agree with the federal government that, for example, we're going to protect human subjects in a certain way, abiding by those regulations. So it's our job as an institution, and each faculty member has a certain responsibility, but again, there's a professional seated to help you think through what exactly those terms and conditions are and how at Baylor we're going to go about checking those boxes as it were.

DEREK SMITH:

So if the National Science Foundation, for instance, if they're funding a professor to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, there're some insurance for themselves along the way, too, even. If they're given that amount of money to make sure that things are done the right way and that it's done in the manner that that investment will pay off the right way for them.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

That's right. I think the regulations are really an attempt to codify general ethical principles. And so they're going to require us, you have to sign off on this and submit this document, that there's a specific procedure, but the intent behind that is stewardship and doing right by the community at large in terms of our research. And I think as a Christian institution, that's also our intent. We're not just here to check the boxes on the regulations. We also, I think my whole team would say the same thing. We have a real desire and a will to ensure that we're hitting those high ethical standards, not just because it's the rule, but because it's right.

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

And I might add to that. I was in a program review yesterday with some external advisors from one of our graduate programs. And the external advisor actually brought up that because we're a Christian institution we perhaps have a unique position by which to speak into things like ethics and responsible conduct of research and what that means. And that's certainly something that resonates with me. It's something I've said before, that part of being a Christian research university means we're going to do things the right way. But I would love to think that as Baylor continues to grow into our R1 clothing, one of the areas that we lead is in the area of ethics and compliance and demonstrating that we're living up to who we are as an institution. We can certainly talk about morality and ethics and the right way to do things in a way that some state schools can't. So I'm excited about that opportunity in front of us.

DEREK SMITH:

Talking with Susan Stearsman and Kevin Chambliss, and to both of you, as we head into the final moments here on the program, I want to ask you, cast that vision for ethics and compliance. Susan, earlier you mentioned a new research administration system coming online. Could you look ahead a little bit? Just give us a brief rundown of what you're excited about. Maybe Susan, I'll start with you as we look ahead to later, 2022, and then on to 2023.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Yeah. I think that system implementation that I mentioned earlier is probably number one in my mind. It's the biggest thing on my horizon right now. And I think, especially as we implement that, there are so many integration points, not just among the research administrative teams, but also across Baylor, that I'm looking forward to making those connections even stronger, really with the result to alleviate the faculties having to deal and navigate all of those things.

DEREK SMITH:

And what about you, Kevin?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Well, certainly I'm also looking forward to the system being in place. Not only is it going to increase connectivity and streamline workflow, it's going to give us visibility into things that we just hadn't had before. And I think every faculty member at Baylor will ultimately feel a sense of relief and a sense of improved efficiency downstream. But I also want don't want to leave the conversation without pointing out that we're not done. We're continuing to have a hiring plan to continue to further Illuminate. We're going to continue to add new faces, new faculty to various departments across campus, bring additional new mentors to Baylor students. And we're going to continue to grow our team to support that as we move forward. So I think it's a really exciting future in front of us in the next couple of years.

DEREK SMITH:

Absolutely. Well, Susan, Kevin, a happy National Research Administrator Day to you and to your teams from us and from the Baylor family as well. Anything you'd like to say to your teams as we close?

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

Well, just how grateful I am for the work that they do every day. I know that it's tough sledding sometimes, but clearly we've moved the needle. We're continuing to move the needle. The trajectory is correct, and we're all going to strive to get better each day, just like the rest of you.

DEREK SMITH:

Absolutely. Great work being done. Well, Kevin, Susan, thanks so much for jumping on today. We appreciate it. We look forward to seeing that growth in the weeks and months ahead.

KEVIN CHAMBLISS:

All right. Thanks, Derek.

SUSAN STEARSMAN:

Thanks, Derek.

DEREK SMITH:

Kevin Chambliss, Baylor's Vice Provost for Research and Susan Stearsman, Baylor's Associate Vice Provost for Research, our guests today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith reminding you you can hear this and other programs online, baylor.edu/connections. You can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.