Last semester, John Tomblin, executive vice president for research and industry and defense programs at Wichita State, explicitly stated the university’s goal of becoming a Research 1 university. To do this, WSU needs to spend at least $50 million on research and award 70 research-based doctorates in one year.
This title would raise Wichita State into the same domain as the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, two schools that attained R1 status years ago.
Coleen Pugh, vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School, said Wichita State’s president Richard Muma shares this ambition with Tomblin.
“We’ve kind of gone back and forth between being it an implicit goal, versus something that would be great if we attain,” Pugh said. “He (Muma) would say, it is definitely a goal of becoming R1. It’s wonderful to be R1, both for the recognition, as well as for opportunities that that often brings.”
Despite this objective, Wichita State failed to meet the requirements for the most recent three-year classification cycle and will have to wait a few years before it can be reevaluated.
For this classification cycle, year to year, Wichita State spent roughly $370 million on research but only awarded 48 research-based doctorates.
Why WSU wants R1 Status
Pierre Harter, the associate vice president for research and industry engagement at WSU, outlined a few of the reasons why Wichita State is hoping to become an R1 university.
“Research 1 universities are typically held at a higher regard. It’s more prestigious, so you can recruit higher-caliber students,” Harter said. “It helps with retaining and recruiting more prestigious faculty that bring more research. There’s a lot of different types of grant organizations, whether it’s government funding or non-profit or non-governmental agencies that offer research grants, that if you’re not R1, it’s pretty difficult to get.”
Pugh compared the difficulty of attaining R1 status to the “chicken or the egg” dilemma.
“Having the (R1) designation correlates, I would say, with greater resources and correlates with greater opportunities,” Pugh said. “Whether we have greater resources and greater opportunities as a result of being R1, or we become R1 because we have greater resources now. It’s hard to say what comes first.”
Pugh echoed Harter’s sentiments, saying that being an R1 university would provide Wichita State with greater opportunities. She also thinks it would boost morale for the school.
“I kind of equate it to when you bring in someone new or you have a big change,” Pugh said. “It’s a really great incentive to make people think about what is possible and sort of reinvigorate energy.”
Harter said the specific doctoral degrees that count toward R1 guidelines are what is keeping them from meeting that threshold.
“If you look at the total number of doctorates that we put out, (we’re) well over 70,” Harter said. “But nursing and physical therapy and audiology, those are clinical-based. They’re not really doing a lot of research or dissertations, so those don’t count.”
How WSU plans to become an R1 university
Wichita State is in the process of increasing the number of research-based doctorates it awards. Pugh said that Wichita State’s Graduate School is creating a material science and engineering doctorate program. They are also beginning an interdisciplinary master’s program that could eventually result in a doctorate program of the same nature.
“We’re kind of working our way through the system to put it up to faculty consideration and then (Kansas Board of Regents) vote in the fall,” Pugh said.
These new graduate programs are adaptable, allowing students to pursue a degree with an analytics emphasis in any field they desire.
“To me, it’s very important that it’s not just an individualized major, but that the product is greater than the sum of its parts; where you’re maybe creating a new field,” Pugh said.
Faculty are working to increase research funding for both graduate and undergraduate students as well.
“We have a wonderful program we started last year called Delfin,” Pugh said. “We became the third U.S. institute to join Delfin. The idea is to provide an undergraduate research experience for students from Latin American countries.”
Pugh said Wichita State has also been trying to get National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates, a program that provides funding for intensive research.
These initiatives have the potential to help Wichita State qualify for R1 status in 2028 when the next Carnegie Classification review is set to take place.
