Fearless Sifting

I’ve talked about it in general before, but here is a great specific example of it happening, keeping quality professors pays for itself in the end.

University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemist Doug Weibel may not be able to bend or shape cells any way he wants to — yet.

However, Weibel’s efforts to uncover the molecular choreography within the cell that governs their physical, chemical and physiological attributes — including shape, behavior and development — have earned the young scientist a prestigious Searle Scholar Award. The $300,000 award over three years was last conferred on a UW-Madison faculty member in 1997 when pharmacy professor Ben Shen was recognized.

From a university perspective that’s a whole bunch of money funding research. Money that helps every aspect of university financially because what it doesn’t pay for directly, it frees up money to spend on. From a state legislature perspective, it’s money coming into the state from outside sources and financing for the university that doesn’t cost the state or taxpayers a single dime.

This may not be a professor who is going to leave, but just imagine if he did. He would be taking all of his research and the money that came with it to another school. Money that we would have to make up some of through other sources. I don’t think it’s hard to see why investing a fraction of the money that a UW professor receives in outside funding, in making sure that they stay a UW professor is a good idea both fiscally and academically.