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II. Strategically Focused Research

Building our research enterprise and raising its profile worldwide will require us to make carefully considered choices—we can’t do everything and do it well. This does not mean compromising the expansive curiosity that is our Jesuit legacy. Indeed, Fordham has great potential to leverage current strengths and build on its growing excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship and inter-professional pursuits. But continuing on this path will require us to make partnerships with other organizations the norm rather than the exception, and to be more resourceful in bringing faculty and students together at the crossroads of disciplines.

A. Establish Fordham as a Competitive Research Institution in Strategically Defined Areas

  1. Identify and invest in selected areas of current and future strength in research and scholarship.
     
  2. Establish targeted interdisciplinary research initiatives that will contribute newknowledge about the trends and challenges shaping contemporary urban life, as well as about their roots and causes. Such initiatives might focus, for example, oneconomic development, healthcare and health disparities, sustainability, cybersecurity, humanitarianism, globalization of business and finance, immigration, communications, media, and fashion.
     
  3. Establish an initiative fund for the recruitment of distinguished teaching scholars,including cluster appointments, in areas of research that are germane to our strategically defined priorities and that have the greatest potential to attract external funding.

B. Promote Faculty-Student Research Collaboration

  1. Develop innovative models that promote meaningful faculty-student collaboration, mentorship, and supervision at the graduate/professional and undergraduate levels.
     
  2. Actively support graduate/professional and undergraduate student research and scholarship, ensuring that all students, as well as the faculty who participate, are supported, have meaningful experiences, and are recognized for their accomplishments.

C. Significantly Enhance Research Resources

  1. Invest in the necessary library, laboratory, and clinical resources—human, physical, and technological—to support increased faculty and student engagement in research and scholarship.
     
  2. Develop faculty workload policies that in revenue-positive or revenue-neutral ways reward research effectiveness, achievement, and collaboration with students, while preserving commitment to teaching.
     
  3. Establish a mentoring program or principal investigator institute for junior faculty members to enhance their ability to secure externally funded research grants.
     
  4. Set annual targets for growth in externally funded faculty research and provide effective professional support in obtaining and administering grants and publishing results in peer-reviewed journals.