A challenge - that's how Professor Roger Downer, president of UL, describes his new job. "I have nothing but admiration for what has been achieved at Limerick over the last 26 years.
"Ed Walsh has done a remarkable job taking a green-field site and building it into a university," he says. "My challenge is to define a new plateau and put in place strategies and plans to achieve a higher level. Can you think of a more exciting challenge?" Downer, a Protestant from Belfast who has spent most of his working life in Canada, took up his new position last September. He is no stranger to the State, however. He and his family have holidayed here regularly, and in his undergraduate days at QUB, he visited Dublin as a member of both the Queen's and Collegians rugby teams. As a keen youth-hosteller he became acquainted with An Oige. UL's new president has impressive credentials. A scientist by training, Downer spent most of his working life at the University of Waterloo, Canada, where he taught, conducted research and later moved into administration. In 1996, he was appointed president of the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, an international postgrad university.
When his appointment to Limerick was first announced, he was described to E&L as "a man who can spot bullshit at 50 paces". UL staff were impressed by Downer's research expertise, given the university's commitment to double its research capacity. During his first three months, Downer held his fire; it wasn't until December that he addressed faculty and staff in what was described as a "winds of change" speech. The spin doctors say he was greeted with "sustained applause" and that the "initial reaction was highly positive". Predictably, research is high on the Downer agenda. But where exactly does UL stand in terms of research? Downer is reluctant to be drawn. All he will say is that "there is room for improvement" and Limerick "is not alone in this . . . We have to increase the quality and quantity of our research." The ideal, he notes, is that each professor would be an outstanding researcher, but "the reality is that this is not a viable option". Faculty members are to be encouraged to carry out research. "In the short term, those who chose not to do research can service the faculty in other areas."
However, specific research areas are to be selected for development. "We can't be the best in the world in every area," Downer says. "We have to prioritise and identify a few areas in which we can become competitive with the best in the world." UL academics are currently in the process of doing just this, Downer says. In order to qualify for the new focus, areas of research must be financially sustainable, built on a core of competence, involve a critical mass of researchers (about 10) and be socially or economically relevant. A key part of the process is the hiring of "bright young talented researchers, people with fire in their bellies rather than single eminent academics, who, while being very respected in their fields, may be moving towards the end of their careers". A major task he faces now, he says, is to sell Limerick as an attractive place in which to build a research career. Incentives include the institution's strong commitment to research, Ireland's economic growth and the fact that it is an attractive location. "There's always a danger that people will feel threatened. They mustn't feel they are second-class citizens. We will have the research focus areas, and other researchers will continue to research independently," Downer stresses.
The objective of the changes he proposes is "to ensure that the financial, physical and human resources are deployed optimally to advance the dual academic missions of teaching and research".
Funding will be a major issue, Downer asserts, since the new intake will not fill existing jobs. "It's a major challenge to find the funds," but he predicts that they will come from external sources, rather than from the HEA's research and development initiative, which was launched in November. "We would prefer to use the HEA money to provide physical resources."
Changes too, are on the cards at undergraduate level. According to Downer, UL's teacher-student ratio - around one-to-23 - is "unacceptably high, but while I would prefer smaller classes, I am much more interested in the amount of contact between teachers and students. "In the best universities you're talking about a teacher-student ratio of about one-to-eight. Irish universities are poorly serviced in this regard." At UL, resources must be redeployed and used more wisely, he says. For example, facts can be delivered electronically so teachers can interact with and challenge students, rather than regurgitate textbook information. While humanities students should be engaged in more tutorials, science students should be involved to a greater extent in their own experiments.
"Science is about doing, yet so much science teaching is about talking. We should be giving students the opportunity to experience the excitement of formulating a hypothesis, designing an experiment, running it, getting the results and drawing the conclusions." Teaching, he says, is an important part of UL's mandate. "If you look at it as an engineering flow chart, you have the raw material, the process and the finished product. We can improve the graduate intake, we can improve the pedagogy and in terms of the finished product we can look at value-added" - by which he means communications skills, global awareness and the ability to synthesise information, for example. "I want to introduce a value-added element into our teaching and optimise the quality of the experience."
Downer is also keen to see a rationalising of UL's undergraduate programmes. "We have too many courses," he states. "Knowledge is exploding and we can't expect to teach every single fact that is available." UL's deans are currently examining the curriculum to decide "whether every single course is necessary".
With fewer courses and greater teacher-student interaction a likelihood, how does Downer feel about increases in the undergraduate intake? "It's my personal view that we should not expand at undergraduate level, and if there is to be expansion it should be at postgraduate level. But the decisions have to be made in consultation with other people." UL's new president also argues in favour of the establishment of an endowment fund for the college. "When you look at the great universities, I don't know of an institution that has achieved greatness on the basis of tuition fees and state funding. Endowment funds give universities an independence and autonomy which is not possible in state-run universities." In the US, Princeton has an endowment fund worth in excess of $3 billion, while Harvard and Stanford have even larger amounts invested, Downer notes.
"These universities can take in the students they wish, they can offer scholarships, hire staff and expand areas as they think appropriate. We should be aspiring to that." He acknowledges, though, that any endowment fund begun during his tenure will take years to mature.
Since taking up the job, Downer says he has been impressed by the interaction that exists between Irish universities. "There's a great danger in many jurisdictions that universities are in competition with each other," he says. "I find myself benefitting greatly from the interaction with the other heads of Irish universities." He admits, though, to initial disappointment with Ireland's research investment figures and while he welcomes the new HEA funding arrangements, argues that they remain insufficient.
