Florida State Using "Cluster Hiring" to Improve Research Standing

FSU hopes new hires will enhance reputation

The competition for the superstars of the research world is heating up, as more and more universities create programs to attract research faculty to their campuses. One of the most ambitious in the country is Florida State University's Pathways to Excellence program. FSU intends to hire 200 tenured or tenured-track professors within a five-year period, with the intention of transforming the quality of its Ph.D. programs.

 

Under the faculty development arm of this program, the university will hire 6-8 star professors built around each of six academic themes. In its first round of hires to create these interdisciplinary clusters, between $4 million to $5 million was spent to attract 38 faculty members. Twelve of these hires have been at the senior, Full Professor level. Additional goals of the program include enhancing the number and amount of federal grants, scholarly productivity, and increasing graduate program and faculty recognition, and the number of Ph.D. graduates. Besides encouraging the development of its academic reputation, the university hopes these efforts will be a step toward membership in the Association of American Universities.

 

While programs to attract research faculty such as the Pathways to Excellence increase in size and frequency across the country, universities may feel the pressure of losing their existing faculty to other institutions. Are there enough top-notch researchers to go around, or will the drive to attract the best and the brightest spark an academic arms race for talent?

 

The website for the Pathways to Excellence at FSU is http://pathways.fsu.edu/faculty/.