Research Messenger
Volume 1 Issue 1
October 9, 2006
Research Messenger
It's early in SDSU's 110th academic year, and we've just welcomed our university's largest cohort of faculty. Each of the new colleagues with whom I've interacted brings a demanding research agenda, one that complements the strong programs of individual and collective scholarship our faculty have developed over the past quarter century. SDSU faculty continue to fulfill California's charge to educate the state's next generation of skilled workers, yet increasingly exceed that charge to compete for extramural resources and to produce original scholarship. Our research achievements are manifested in publication rates and support levels that match those of flagship universities of most states, in our 16 doctoral programs (with more brewing) and in our Carnegie classification as a “Research University / High Research.”
This is the inaugural issue of the Research Messenger, an occasional note to the SDSU community designed to inform, to elicit reaction, to promote the place of original scholarship in our professional lives, and to honor the research achievements of our faculty and staff.
Research is a complex business at SDSU, in part because it is not integral to our charge from the state, and so may be performed off campus, overseen by an auxiliary to the University – the SDSU Research Foundation – and even rewarded with overload pay. One intended purpose of the Research Messenger is to clarify these operations.
Research is perhaps the most taxing and relentless component of a faculty member's career: never out of mind, never finished, with its products ruthlessly critiqued by anonymous experts. Research is not on a schedule of classes and meetings as are the other two aspects of faculty life, and so is vulnerable to delay until those more visible obligations are met, even to the ultimate detriment of one's career. Thus, RM will encourage and celebrate scholarly success.
RM's modest aim in this initial issue is to introduce the three offices that are devoted to the interwoven activities of graduate education and research. First, the Office of Graduate Affairs, whose purpose is to recruit, guide, and lead the evolution of graduate education at the credential, Masters, and Doctoral levels. Graduate Affairs is located in Manchester Hall 3320, and is overseen by interim Graduate Dean Steve Kramer.
Secondly, the Office of Research Affairs, whose staff both promote research through internal funding mechanisms and honorary lectureships, and ensure that SDSU's scholarship meets the legal and ethical standards demanded by our sponsors and embraced by our faculty. The Research Office is in Administration 222 and is overseen by Director of Research Camille Nebeker.
Finally, the Research Foundation, the university auxiliary through which research funds flow, research employees are hired, and research space is accorded. The Research Foundation occupies the upper two floors of the Gateway Center, and I serve as interim CEO.
I respect the daily demand to clear one's in-box, and so will keep RM brief and focused. But I want to leave you with a request. SDSU's research achievements are not sufficiently promoted, a situation that our Office of Marketing and Communications is eager to rectify. If you have a publication that you feel has powerful media appeal, please alert Lorena Nava (lnava@mail.sdsu.edu), with cc to me, well before its appearance so she has time to get a layperson's description of the importance of the work, and to distribute it to the mass media, who would announce it on the day of its publication.
Here is an example that went out today. Roger Davis (Biology) and his doctoral student Nathan Spann are about to report in the J. Biol. Chem. that they have solved a problem in drugs designed to reduce LDL levels. It's long been known that a liver enzyme – MTP – is responsible for producing lipoproteins, and that by inhibiting MTP, cholesterol levels can be reduced. But tests in animals showed that these inhibitors resulted in fatty deposits being formed in the liver, an unacceptable side effect. So the promising work on MTP inhibitors was abandoned in favor of developing statins, which don't prevent LDLs from being produced, but help clear them from the blood. Davis, Spann and their colleagues have shown that a second enzyme – L/FABP – is responsible for the formation of fatty liver, and that by inhibiting it, this deleterious side effect of MTP is avoided. A cocktail of MTP and L/FABP inhibitors holds promise of preventing LDL production, which is preferable to scavenging existing LDLs using statins.
Such papers of unusual relevance to the public, or books such as Jean Twenge's (Psychology) Generation Me, which took Jean to all the major national media outlets earlier this year, would be what we want to promote.
I try to keep 1:30-2:00 open in my Gateway Center office (room 3513) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Feel free to stop by.
Tom Scott