Research Centers and Institutes & Research Leaders

Research centers and institutes have long been utilized as ways to organize research activities within universities and other research organizations.

Presented below is an adapted excerpt from chapter 5 of my book, Catalyzing Research: Research Leaders and the Complex Faculty/Administration Interface. (Previous articles in Medium’s Catalyzing Research publication presented adapted excerpts from the book’s introductory chapter and chapters on research leaders [part 1|part 2] & core research facilities.)

Research Centers and Institutes

Research centers and institutes have long been utilized as ways to organize research activities within universities and other research organizations. Naming terminologies vary, such as the organized research units across the University of California system and the classification of research centers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology alongside departments and labs via use of the DLC (department, lab, or center) acronym. Whatever they are called, ultimately research centers and institutes are aimed at bringing together collaborating faculty and researchers and providing a physical, or virtual, environment that enhances their ability to conduct productive research.

Typically, research institutes occupy a higher stature than research centers within a research organization, and they may, or may not, be composed of multiple distinct research centers. Very often, use of the term “institute” requires institutional approval and meeting certain criteria related to unit span or funding level. Use of the term “center” is often much less regulated, which, on the positive side, can encourage faculty entrepreneurship, but on the negative side, can lead to a proliferation of one-person or in name only centers that may compound complexity and confusion as research organizations examine their research centers.

A research center or institute can provide a mechanism to make strategic investments in a defined, often interdisciplinary area that, without the center or institute structure, would require a series of uncoordinated investments to disparate parts of the research organization.

Importance to the Research Enterprise

Research centers and institutes can benefit researchers, research enterprises, and research organizations. For instance, they can provide valuable visibility to an organization’s research strengths and emphases in certain disciplinary or interdisciplinary fields. Internal to a research organization, this enhanced visibility can:

• Help researchers self-assemble across traditional departmental or other unit lines around a shared scientific problem or opportunity
• Allow leaders and administrators to identify and designate an area for focused investment, development, and nurturing

Externally, the visibility provided by a research center or institute can help attract the attention of:

• Potential funders, including grant-making foundations and individual philanthropists
• Talented faculty and other researchers, including postdocs and graduate students, who are interested in working alongside others and tackling research problems in a cohesive, center of excellence–type environment

Within research organizations, centers and institutes are sometimes able to gain an increased agility or nimbleness versus other parts of the research organization, accomplished via organizational policies or a center’s or institute’s specific design properties. This may enable them to more quickly respond to unique funding and partnership opportunities that would be more difficult, or impossible, for other research efforts at the institution. Of course, with this kind of flexibility comes a risk that it may be used inappropriately.

Research centers and institutes will ideally enhance and facilitate collaboration between member, or otherwise associated, faculty and researchers. A research center or institute can provide a mechanism to make strategic investments in a defined, often interdisciplinary area that, without the center or institute structure, would require a series of uncoordinated investments to disparate parts of the research organization. The productive impacts of such disparate investments are more difficult to coordinate and track than similar investments in a focal center or institute.

Another important characteristic of research centers and institutes is that they sometimes convey that the effort has received significant competitive external funding, perhaps from federal funding sources such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, or Department of Energy, among other research-funding agencies. This kind of significant funding to the research center or institute can serve to validate the quality of the research taking place and also, by extension, the research center’s or institute’s organizational and governance structures, operations, and research strategies.

Complexity at the Faculty/Administration Interface

Research centers and institutes operate at the nexus between faculty and the administration — the defining characteristic for inclusion of potential research leader focus areas in Part Two of this book.

One could imagine a research center or institute as existing on an exposed ridge, above the tree line. A research leader standing on the ridge and looking down one side sees faculty-led research laboratories composed of teams of researchers working on projects connected to the research center’s or institute’s scientific priorities — priorities likely established and monitored by faculty.

Turning and looking down the other side of the ridge, the research leader sees administrators setting up and supporting unique organizational structures, funding, and support mechanisms for the research center or institute; providing enhanced reporting and operations support; and administering complex center or institute advisory structures — all of which are activities that are much less common outside of research center and institute structures.

Adding another complexity, while faculty are often organized into departmental and/or divisional structures, research centers and institutes often (although not always) exist on another plane and may compete head-to-head — in complicated and sometimes counterproductive ways — with traditional units for research recognition and resources.

Research centers and institutes can serve as testing grounds for uniquely considered and crafted organizational and governance structures. Particular legal structures — for example, 501(c)(3) organizations or joint research ventures — are sometimes employed, particularly when the research center or institute is being established as a partnership between two organizations — for example, between a research university and a local research-active hospital.

Financially, significant institutional funds are often invested in the start-up and ongoing operations of research centers and institutes, which often necessitates additional administrative elements and oversight that further complicate the already messy interface between faculty and the administration at which centers and institutes operate.

While the institutional reporting lines of research centers and institutes vary, many prominent or large research centers and institutes report to senior members of the research organization’s administration, which can provide certain management advantages but also further highlights the position of research centers or institutes atop the metaphorical exposed, steep, and sometimes vulnerable ridge.

Potential Risks and Rewards

While research leaders are typically aware of the importance and potential benefits of research centers and institutes to their institutions and to research organizations generally, the messy interface between faculty and the administration does not always make research leaders eager to engage proactively and intensely in research center and institute affairs.

Not included in this excerpt are specific examples in the book from my consulting experiences that highlight:

• Potential risks of research leader inaction — specifically: (1) overly optimistic projections of center sustainability, and (2) unchecked trajectories of mature centers and institutes
• Potential rewards from research leader attention — specifically: (1) productive collaborative design of a research institute, and (2) alignment with the research strategic plan

This material is excerpted and adapted from the book, Catalyzing Research: Research Leaders and the Complex Faculty/Administration Interface.

RAND HALEY has devoted his career to helping organizations strengthen their scientific research enterprises. He has partnered with leadership and faculty at a wide range of leading and emerging research institutions and led research strategy and management projects at over 50 organizations.