Working within this new model for university research, the ERC has, from the beginning of the Program, presented a number of challenges. Meeting those challenges has required hard work, ingenuity and, at times, organizational courage on the part of Center Directors and other research managers. At the same time, the operation of an ERC yields special rewards for all those involved -- leaders and managers, faculty, industrial members, and students.

One of the first challenges that an ERC Director, or prospective director, faces is to oversee the collective planning of a long-term research strategy by a group of people from different disciplines, many of them already quite successful in their individual research programs, who may not have even worked together before. The reward, for the research manager, is in being able to persuade the members of such a group to aim their research in a direction they may not have wanted to go and may not initially have understood -- and then to see them arrive at the recognition that the center's vision is valid and that they can succeed in the context of the strategic plan.

It is certainly challenging for a group of disparate faculty members collectively to determine where the "uncharted territories" lie in a given field, especially when the field itself is new. The reward for faculty participating in this exploration is the ability to enter a new field of research with funding provided and with the support of other faculty in the center. Essentially, faculty are rewarded with the opportunity to do pioneering work.

However, funding per se is not sufficient for most ERC participants. In any ERC, some faculty members may have personal research support rivaling that of the entire center. Their incentive is that they can both contribute and gain as a team player in the center's pioneering work. Part of the validation of a center's success, for the research manager, is the continued willingness of independently successful investigators to participate, even adapting their well-regarded work to the center's vision.

A related challenge for the Director is in finding ways to build camaraderie and team spirit among researchers accustomed to working independently. The Director must be able to recognize the type of individuals who can be effective team members.

A significant challenge lies in the fact that industry has an inherently different vision than the center faculty do. In general, they simply do not take as long a view. Consequently, industry's input can be a deterrent to the development of a vital, sustaining vision for the center. Yet their viewpoints and needs must be taken into account in a way that maintains their commitment to the center.

The corresponding reward, for the research management team, is in making industry a believer in the ERC's long-term plan and in helping industrial members understand that their needs will be met better by letting the ERC pursue its long-range plans. Several Directors have noted the satisfaction that comes with proving to industry, by means of actual results over a period of years, that this approach will benefit them more than having the ERC address their immediate needs would.

The cross-disciplinarity of the ERC's field of research can itself present challenges, although, as the previous section described, this is no longer the problem it was when the ERC Program began. Still, an area can be so thoroughly cross-disciplinary that ERC faculty encounter difficulties in recruiting within the departments. Tenure and promotion are, of course, vital issues for young faculty members. Early in the ERC Program, there was great concern about the effect of participation in a cross-disciplinary research center, where team research and multiple authorship of papers blurred the contributions of individuals. Tenure and promotion decisions are made in the departments -- so the concerns were well founded. However, out of 15 ERCs responding to a questionnaire, 10 stated that both tenure and promotion were positively influenced by faculty involvement in the ERC. (The other five ERCs reported no direct impact.) Examples of specific responses include:

• The ERC provides a framework and support mechanism for young faculty which encourages research by setting goals, providing mentorship, and sharing equipment and information.
• The culture at our university has long recognized in the promotion and tenure decision process the positive importance of faculty participation in research centers. We rely on the department heads of all departments represented to ensure that departmental promotion and tenure policies encourage center participation.
• This question has been exhaustively studied by universities and it is clear and unanimous that being an ERC investigator is a big plus and helps with promotion and tenure.
• The ERC provides the faculty with the opportunity to get national exposure, support more students, continually update educational material with the latest research results, and participate in industry-relevant research. Publication is facilitated. The natural result is advancement in the academic ranks.

There is a risk that if the tenure/promotion process is handled through an academic committee within the department, researchers may tend to focus on publications at the sacrifice of securing funding or extending the research to a useful technology transfer. This prospect can be minimized if the Center Director and Associate Director for Research maintain close ties with the departments and ensure that they have a substantive, direct input to the promotion and tenure process within the departments.

Thus, one of the primary rewards of ERC research program management is seeing the ERC become accepted by researchers in associated fields and watching the mainstream move in the direction the ERC has already gone, so that faculty and students perceive participation in the ERC not as a career risk but as a career enhancement.
 

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