In a sweet spot
Executive Vice President and Provost Michael Gealt said that as a Carnegie R2 research institution, CMU has the status to attract high-level researchers and equipment — and the grants that often support them — while Central’s size enables students to take the controls.
Gealt and Ash noted that at larger universities, multiple layers of graduate assistants and other intermediaries often stand between students and professors and their research.
“At CMU, you’ll see faculty members and undergrads standing side by side working on projects together,” Ash said.
Case in point: Engineering and technology faculty member Yousef Haseli recently teamed up with six senior research assistants to build a gasifier for alternative fuel research.
Making choices
With so much gee-whiz technology out there, how does CMU decide what’s worth its investment?
“We have world-class faculty who are at the cutting edge of what’s happening in their fields,” Gealt explained. “The research determines the technology.”
Ash points to the new biosafety level-three hazardous materials lab in the Biosciences Building, where chemistry and biochemistry faculty member Ben Swarts researches how to fight tuberculosis.
“We would not have built that unless we had a faculty member coming in who would need it,” Ash said.