Intangible Factors Are Crucial In Research Universities' Quest For High Achievement In Science

An institution's locale, reputation, and spirit can be as important as big budgets and elegant labs, researchers claim Few academic scientists would disagree with the notion that the research prowess of a university depends to a great extent on how much money the school is willing to invest in its scientists and the material needs that their investigations entail. And few would deny that the impact of the research reports a school generates each year is one valid gauge of return on that investment and, thus, a means of assessing its position in the hierarchy of scientific powerhouses. But, according to research scientists at major universities throughout the United States, there are several additional factors that, while defying quantification, nevertheless `contribute to and reflect a rich and fertile research environment. If such measurable or observable conditions as adequate funding and properly outfitted labs are prerequisite to high achievement, they say, so are a number of these "soft" factors. To what degree, for example, does a research university encourage creative exchange among scientific disciplines? Does a prestigious tradition help it woo top talent--graduate students as well as faculty--away from other institutions? And what about the physical setting of its campus: Is it in the heart of a big- city slum--or nestled into a peaceful small-town community? Is it isolated in the countryside, far from cultural centers--or is it just a cab ride away from museums and cafes? For an academic institution to achieve and maintain enduring prominence as a research hub, scientists agree, a lot rests on how positively it can answer these and other questions about what it has to offer beyond big money and fancy labs. One eminently valuable, if intangible, attribute, for example, is a school's "image." Researchers generally agree that, since success tends to breed success, a good reputation for past achievement can be a forceful determinant of an institution's future gains. "Places have tradition," says Jack L. Strominger, a professor of biochemistry at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Strominger ranked among the 100 most cited researchers in the world during the 1980s, according to recent data from the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). "People come here because they know there's been outstanding work done here, and it becomes catalytic," he says. "The better place you're at," he adds, "the better colleagues you have to talk to, the better students and postdocs you get, the better you're going to look, the more fun you're going to have, and the more you're going to be able to accomplish." Certainly, Harvard's research status and accomplishments are enviable: 17th in total research spending in 1991, according to the National Science Foundation; second in citations per paper in the physical sciences, according to recent ISI studies, second in chemistry citations, and seventh in biology citations. Harvard is also first--by quite a distance--in science Nobels going to faculty in residence at time of award with 24. (Rockefeller University in New York City is second with 13.) Another intangible factor that scientists agree is important to advancing experimental science at many successful research universities is an atmosphere of cooperative relations among different departments and their faculty and graduate students. This factor is emphasized more strongly, perhaps, at those institutions whose fortunes have risen in tandem with United States grant-based research since World War II.` "There's a tradition here of working togeth-er, which makes the whole a bit more than the sum of its parts," says Rick Dahlquist, director of the multidisciplinary Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon, Eugene, and a professor of chemistry at the school. Oregon, although not among NSF's top 100 spenders for research, ranked 10th in citations per paper in biological sciences and 25th in physics, according to ISI. The 30-year-old molecular biology institute has served as the model for several similar institutes at Oregon. Most research activity at the school takes place within the framework of these institutes, according to Dahlquist. "The institutes allow research-active faculty to get together, even if they aren't in the same department, to pursue common goals," Dahlquist says. "That has turned out to be the real strength in this place over the years. We tend to all speak a common language, and we all recognize what good science is in a common way." Interplay among various factors, intangible and otherwise, also can be important, according to many research faculty. For example, important to the continued success of a top-flight research institution, these scientists say, is the ability to consistently attract the best graduate students and faculty. Nonquantifiable factors, such as a reputation for accomplishment or a cooperative atmosphere, can figure prominently in this ability. "For any research institution to be really great, it has to have two important components aside from money, aside from facilities," says Robert Tjian, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. "One is the faculty, and the other is the students." Tjian, like Harvard's Strominger, is among the 100 most cited scientists of the 1980s. And UC-Berkeley is among the nation's leading research institutions by several measures: 13th in total research spending, sixth in biology citations per paper, 12th in physics citations, 15th in chemistry citations, and fourth in science Nobels. The two components--top faculty and graduate students--are intimately interconnected, Tjian adds. "If you have one, you have the other," he says. "The best faculty are going to go where they can have access to the best graduate students, because the graduate students are the engine that runs the whole thing. They're the ones doing the experiments." A strong record of research success tends to be self-sustaining, say scientists at several leading institutions, agreeing with Harvard's Strominger. "History plays the biggest role," says Philip Anderson, a professor of physics at Princeton University and a 1977 Nobel Prize winner in physics. "If you've started early and stayed at some high level of quality, you're bound to continue." Princeton, while ranking 64th in total research spending, stands third in physics citations per paper, fifth in biology citations, and 43rd in chemistry. The university ranks eighth in science Nobels. "Once a school has got a certain reputation, it makes it easier to get other high-quality people to go there," says Paul Green- gard, a professor of molecular and cellular neuroscience at Rockefeller University and one of ISI's 100 most cited scientists of the 1980s. "It's not terribly difficult to keep the thing perpetuating itself. People like to go to places that are considered the bastions, so these become self-fulfilling prophecies." Rockefeller, which has focused its efforts in the biomedical disciplines, ranks 82nd in overall expenditures for research. But the university tops the listings in citations per paper in the biological sciences, and is second in total Nobel science prizes with 13. In addition to institutions having identifiable traditions of success, the Nobel Prize also has a traceable "lineage" in many cases, according to Harvard's Stro-minger. "It's amazing how many Nobel laureates worked in the labs of Nobel laureates when they were young scientists," Stro-minger says. The best example of this phenomenon, he says, is Carl Cori, a 1947 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine. A professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Cori had seven students and postdocs who won Nobel Prizes, including Edwin Krebs, a 1992 Nobel winner in physiology or medicine, Strominger notes. Strominger declines to describe this heritage in terms of simple teacher-student relationships. "It's some sort of intensity and critical attitude toward science that gets transmitted," he adds, "the instinct to identify important areas for research and to [then] pursue and complete problems within these areas." Histories of interdisciplinary and cooperative activity play important parts in a research university's record of research accomplishment, scientists say. "A positive thing here is an easy communication between physics, chemistry, and engineering," says Roald Hoffmann, a professor of chemistry at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and a 1981 Nobel laureate in chemistry. "Compared to other places, it's really unusual and leads to a certain symbiosis in research." Hoffmann traces the collaboration among the three departments to a trio of researchers who came to Cornell in the years before World War II. The three were physicist Hans A. Bethe, chemist Peter Debye, and engineer Henry Sack. The interaction among the disciplines has outlasted its origins and continues to be expressed in such efforts as the NSF-funded Materials Science Center in Ithaca, according to Hoffmann. Cornell ranks seventh in overall research spending, 18th in chemistry citations per paper, 24th in physics, and 25th in biology. The university's six science Nobels place Cornell at seventh in that count. Researchers at other top institutions report similarly cooperative relationships within their schools. "There's terrific interaction between laboratories here," says 1992 Nobelist Krebs, a professor of pharmacology and biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle. "The scientific contacts and collaborations possible here are very good, and the spirit is one that encourages that." After about 20 years at Washington, between 1948 and 1968, Krebs says he moved to another university for about a decade. In the late 1970s, he returned to Seattle. "One of the reasons that I was attracted back," he says, "was this interactive spirit here on this campus. I found that I missed that element, which is so evident here." Washington ranks ninth in research expenditures, 17th in biology citations, and 44th in chemistry citations. And three Nobel Prizes have been awarded to university researchers. Judith Eisen, an associate professor of biology at the University of Oregon, Eugene, finds a similar environment at her school. "The general tenor of this place is that there are lots of interactions," says Eisen, who is affiliated with the university's interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience, modeled on the Institute of Molecular Biology. At some well-functioning institutions, the physical layout of the campus may generally mirror and support the collaborative disciplinary structure of the school. Oregon exemplifies this: The departments are vertically organized in their own buildings, while horizontal walkways and bridges link departmental elements into the institutes. "It's the institutes that provide the cooperative research atmosphere for different groups," Eisen says. "In neuroscience, for example, we have people from biology, psychology, and other departments." James Gill is a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. That university, while not among the top 100 spenders for research, is nevertheless ranked first in physics citations and 12th in biology. Gill describes the campus as a successful experiment, built in the 1950s to accommodate the coming baby-boomers. "The theory was to build an academic core, both literally and figuratively, that would be analogous to any other research university, but to have the students in liberal arts colleges scattered on the perimeter," Gill explains. The idea was to incorporate the "uniquely American institution of a liberal arts college" with a research institution. "In some way or another," Gill says, "these [citation] results derive from that." Princeton's Anderson says that several neighboring research and academic institutions, each with their own successful histories, have added to the strength of physics research at the Ivy League university. In particular, he points to interactions with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Institute for Advanced Study. "You've got a cluster of good institutions," Anderson says, "and they tend to be synergistic to each other." The surrounding community and physical environment also can be a factor in the overall intellectual success of a university, according to many researchers. These considerations are difficult to assess, because the same elements often have positive and negative sides. Rockefeller's Greengard says that the university benefits to a degree from the cultural richness of its New York City setting in terms of, for example, attracting some faculty and students. On the other hand, he says, a young research faculty member may not want to raise his or her children in that sometimes-threatening urban environment. But then again, he adds, the nonacademic spouse in a two-career couple might find it easier to prosper in the city over a small town. According to Tjian, the community surrounding UC-Berkeley provides an especially good climate for intellectual activity. Many Berkeley residents, he says, are generally highly educated, and the presence in the Bay area of several other universities and a large segment of the U.S. biotech industry serves to indirectly support research work. "And it's a beautiful place, physically," Tjian says. "It's like living on the hills surrounding the Mediterranean, living in the Berkeley hills overlooking the [San Francisco] Bay." Edwin Krebs at the University of Washington, Seattle, says that geography is clearly a plus in the history of that institution. "We're right in the midst of the city," Krebs says, "but Seattle is a very beautiful city. We laugh about it, but everybody has always said the view of Mount Rainier was worth so many thousands of dollars in yearly salary--and that, unfortunately, the administration knew that."

Intangible Factors Are Crucial In Research Universities' Quest For High Achievement In Science

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