Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Research And Creative Works topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
UT System highlights research scale and calls for broader measures of creative productivity
Summary
System research leaders reported FY24 activity — roughly $484 million in research expenditures and nearly 2,900 proposals — and urged development of broader, campus‑wide metrics for scholarly and creative output.
Associate Vice President Carrie Reeves presented an overview of research and creative‑works activity across the University of Tennessee system and recommended developing broader metrics to capture nontraditional and arts‑based scholarly impact.
Reeves told trustees that in fiscal year 2024 faculty submitted more than 2,900 proposals totaling nearly $2 billion in requested funding and that the system recorded about $484 million in research expenditures. She said proposals were submitted to nearly 1,000 unique sponsors and that industry partners were engaged on many applied projects.
Reeves noted the limits of commonly used metrics. “Research expenditures and rankings only represent a fraction of the high impact, high quality research we’re doing across our system schools and institutes,” she said, arguing that standard indicators skew toward science and engineering and can undercount creative, applied and community‑engaged work. She recommended the system consider a broader set of measures that capture patents, copyrights, exhibitions, performances, invited keynotes, prestigious awards, and other outputs that matter to discipline‑specific impact.
On student engagement, Reeves reported about 2,000 graduate research assistants supported faculty projects in 2024 and said nearly 900 undergraduates were employed as research assistants; she urged trustees to consider the link between graduate‑student support and research growth when setting goals. She also described undergraduate research as an important retention and career pathway even for students who do not ultimately pursue research careers.
Reeves highlighted a high‑impact example from UT Chattanooga: a Violence Reduction Initiative led by Dr. Rick Derenfeldt (presented as interim department head) that partnered with local law enforcement to analyze past gun‑crime investigations, produced measurable reductions in certain crime metrics and has been cited as a model for other sites.
Trustees discussed the challenge of consistently collecting self‑reported faculty productivity measures and asked Reeves to recommend scalable mechanisms for more uniform reporting and for internal metrics that could inform campus and system targets.
Reeves closed by urging a systemwide conversation about what performance measures matter for different disciplines and proposing a phased effort to expand reporting beyond traditional sponsored‑expenditure metrics.
