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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- It's just a matter of time, and you have to do this for three years in a row. And at the end of the third year, they say, you're an R1. And so when's that going to happen?
- We'll have met-
- I didn't say if that's going to happen. I said, when is it going to happen?
- We'll have met all our metrics by 2027, because that is when the next time Carnegie is going to measure all this. And they'll make the announcement in early 2028.
- Thank you for spending a little bit of time here, three years later to talk about the Run to R1 that is almost, now we've got to come up with a new goal for you, maybe a Nobel Prize. The run to Nobel.
- Run to Nobel. That'd be a wonderful thing. Well, you heard it first, Nobel Prize. Hey, Bobcats. Welcome to "The Current," where we talk to faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends about what's going on here at Texas State University. And I'm super excited about today's podcast, because we're talking to my friend, Shreek Mandayam, who's the Vice President for Research. Shreek was actually the very first guest that I had on my video series. We don't do the video series anymore, we have the podcast now, but I used to do a monthly video where I would talk to people what was going on and, you know, I had just become the president and we had this mission to become an R1 institution. I said, I've gotta talk, who's in charge of research? And they said, well, we got this guy named Shreek and I said, well, let's get together with him. And it was the first time we met was actually in front of a camera. So Shreek, welcome to the podcast.
- Thank you, Kelly, pleasure to be here.
- And that was three years ago this very week-
- Can you imagine?
- Can you imagine how time has flown? So back then, I was new. I think you and I started officially the same day.
- July 1.
- But you had actually been here, you'd been hired in the fall and had been kind of back and forth.
- Hired in the spring and I was finishing up my job at the other institution up in the northeast. So I was doing a week here and a week there, and mostly time on the plane.
- You know, it was funny when we were talking the first time and I asked you a question and you kind of started rattling off all these people who were doing research here, and I didn't know that you had been working here for a while. I said, man, this guy's been here for like three days, and he knows so much what's going on here, and you never disabuse me of that. And so you just say, yeah, I'm really smart, so. But anyways, I figured out after a while that you've been here for quite a while. But it's exciting to me to see what you've accomplished, not just you, but you've led a team of people to get to where we are here three years later. Let's go all the way back to that time, though. Think about where we were, and actually, what was your job at the time?
- I was the Associate Vice President for Research, reporting to the provost at that time. My job really was nothing to do with R1. It was to provide infrastructure that Texas State did not have at that time to improve research support for our faculty.
- And I remember after our meeting, after our video, I said, "I've gotta learn more about this guy." So I brought you to my office, and at the end of that meeting, I said, I need a vice president for research. We didn't have one before. And so I talked to the provost, who you worked for, and I said, I need Shreek to be on the cabinet, and we need someone to take charge of the Run to R1. And we both agreed you were the guy. And so a couple of weeks later, you were a vice president. Just happened just like that. And then you've just taken off. But you became a vice president quickly, but, you know, as with most overnight successes, your story began a long time ago. So let's trace back about growing up, where you grew up, and then how you ended up getting here to Texas State, your Texas State story. So talk about where you grew up first.
- I was born in Bangalore in southern India. And my dad at that time was what's called a traveling judge. The court actually traveled to remote parts of the country because people at that time were too poor to come and get justice in the main cities. So we traveled with my dad in fairly remote parts of interior southern India, where the British had set up these bungalows with a courthouse. And so we kind of lived out there. The only place to get an education in the middle of the jungles of southern India are Carmelite nuns and Jesuit missionaries who kind of had schools in the middle of nowhere, taught me English, taught me some discipline. And that's how I grew up in remote parts of southern India until my dad got promoted to be a judge, to be in a proper city.
- And then you graduated from high school, and then what?
- Graduated from high school, and then wrote my entrance examinations, which is a big deal in India.
- That's a big deal, and so different from America, right?
- Totally, the competition is absolutely intense. And I got into a really nice engineering school in Bangalore University. My degree was in electrical and electronics engineering. And then, you know, at that time growing up in India, we were pretty much told what to do by our parents. There wasn't that much freedom. Nobody ever said to me, "Shreek, you can be anything you like," you know? They told me that I was going to go to Iowa State University for graduate school.
- Had you ever heard of Iowa before?
- Well, you know, I had only because my aunt went there in the 1960s.
- Oh, that's right, that's right.
- So my mom was one of 12 children and my aunt was the eldest in the family. And at that time, it was rare for women to be educated even, to get higher education and go to a foreign country. And the United States had this wonderful law, PL 480 called the Food for Peace Act in the '60s. And the objective of that law was to train people from countries like India and Bangladesh and, you know, nations in Africa to become self-sufficient in food. This was at the height of the Cold War, and the United States had developed agricultural technology. So students were given scholarship to enter these great land-grant ag universities like Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas A&M. And my aunt came in that program to Iowa State and got her master's. At that time, it was called home economics. And now I think they call it family and consumer sciences. Got her education in Iowa, worked in the farms in Iowa, went back to India, and ran the food and nutrition program for All India Radio, which is the public broadcasting station in India. And she always said, Iowa is the best place. Iowa State is the best university, and that is where you had to go. And so it was decided for me. And, you know, I had a wonderful time at Iowa State, but, you know, every winter I would think, "Couldn't she have gone to Texas A&M maybe?"
- Florida or something.
- Or Florida or someplace that was warm and wasn't snowed in for eight months a year. But that's how I got to America, because my aunt was in America in the 1960s.
- So you come to Iowa State and you get your doctoral degree there.
- Yeah.
- Are you gonna go back?
- So my advisor of the research group, Bill Lord, he was an Englishman and he was this amazing consummate researcher, amazing leader. He was the editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions and very inspiring person. And I saw his life and I said, I want that. I want to be a faculty member. I want to be a researcher. This is the most exciting thing ever. And I said-
- It's the best job in the world.
- It is, it is. And you get to explore and use your intellect, write research proposals, get funded to pursue your passion. And at the same time, you build your research group. Not only do you teach, but you can mentor students much closely in their lab. So Iowa State transformed my life, and, you know, I had the opportunity, you know, working in higher education, to transform many, many, many lives in my research lab. And so I really thought this is the best job in the world. I never thought I'd end up as a vice president for research or anything. Nobody ever thinks of administration.
- Of course not, yeah.
- When you wanna be a faculty member, you wanna be a researcher, you want to be known for your scholarship, and you want to, you know, discover new things, invent new things, create new things, so.
- You leave Iowa State, what's next?
- You know, I graduated in 1996 with my Ph.D., and that was a very difficult year for faculty jobs, because I knew I wanted to be a faculty member. I had applied to, I don't know, like 35 different universities for faculty positions. And, you know, just at that time, what was known as Glassboro State College got a donation of $100 million from Henry Rowan, an MIT grad to start an engineering school. So they changed the name of the university to Rowan University.
- You know, I did not know that till just now, that that's where that name came from.
- Yeah, they were very grateful. It was-
- What was the name of the university before?
- It was called Glassboro State College.
- Glassboro.
- A small institution that started as a normal school or a teaching school, much like Texas State University. And Glassboro was known at that time for the very famous 1967 Lyndon Johnson/Alexei Kosygin summit. Again, at the height of the Cold War, where Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, Kosygin was visiting the United Nations, they had to meet so as to not lose face in the exact geographic midpoint between Washington and New York, and they found, Glassboro was it, and they met on the campus of Glassboro State University. So I had an association with Lyndon Johnson before I came to Texas State, which is quite amazing how life works out. And so I was hired as the first faculty member in the brand new electrical engineering program. And I'd never heard of Rowan. I thought, this is gonna be fun. It's like a startup, right? And in fact, you get to meet Mr. Rowan in your interview, you know, he wanted to make sure that I was up to snuff and everything.
- That's interesting.
- And it was a blast because, you know, I bought furniture, hired secretaries, learned about accreditation, all the things they did not teach me in graduate school because I had to stand up a program. And then, you know, I just, you know, and I had to build up my own research program, go to the National Science Foundation, thankfully, which was a short train ride away there, make myself known, and I think I got my first funding just because the program manager wanted to shut me up because I was pestering him so much, and began my research career, you know, finally got to full professor, became a department chair, and then, like most people, I was, you know, said, "What's next? I want to interview," and I was interviewing for dean positions, and, you know, I was going to go to CUNY, it was my plan. But then the new president there found out that I was interviewing, and he said, "Why are you leaving?" I said, "Yeah, I've been here many years, "I'm a little bored." He said, "You're bored, let me give you a job." And he, you know, made me the associate provost for research and then the vice president for research at Rowan, where my job was to help other faculty succeed and become successful grant writers. And I love that very, very, very much, because, you know, it's really transformational. You're transforming a faculty member's career and helping them create new knowledge. You're helping countless students who learn how to do research in a lab get engaged with the university. We talk about student success here, and one of the best measures of student success is engagement, and one of the best ways to engage in a university is do research in their faculty members' labs and institutes.
- Dumb it down for me, 'cause I'm just a sociology/criminologist person, but what is your favorite piece of research or discovery that you did?
- One of my proudest moments was a project that we had funded by NASA's Stennis Space Center. At the time, they were testing the space shuttle main engine over at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. And I was part of a project that created a piece of hardware, a computer chip, that would go on the test stand of the Space Shuttle main engine test, rocket test system, to figure out the health of the rocket test system out there. Because it's cryogenics, you know, they take liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, ignite them together, you get steam, water, and that's what powers the rocket. And we were able to tell and predict the health of the numerous valves that were there in the rocket engine test system at Stennis. To get to that point, it almost took me six, seven years to get the trust of the technicians running that system because they just didn't want some professor meddling with their piece of equipment. So it was a lot of work. It was a lot of building human trust and relationships and working with people on the ground. And finally, to get that there was one of our proudest moments.
- You know, I think that people don't understand kind of the history of the modern research university. There was a time when research was done by companies. They were trying to take inventions to market and so on. So it was very market-driven. And because of that, the kind of discoveries that were made were really kind of oriented towards, you know, manufacturing, commercial products and so on. which really stifled research and discovery in fields like the medical fields, for example, and so on. But post-World War II, there was a movement towards universities taking on the responsibility for doing research, because that's where all the brilliant minds were. And there was an opportunity, I think, people saw in creating these research universities. And they oftentimes started in land-grant universities that were already doing research in agriculture, for example, but then taking that metaphor of the researcher who's working in agriculture and moving it into manufacturing and health and medicine and so on, where you start to see this development of these research universities. And so Rowan becomes a Research 2 university over time. That's where they are, same as we are right now. But you start to see universities not just teaching teachers, not just teaching subjects, but also creating information. Talk a little bit about that history so that people can understand what it means to be at a research university?
- Sure, it really started right after the Second World War, the Manhattan Project, you know, was an impetus for that, and the creation of the National Science Foundation by Vannevar Bush. And that provided a way for faculty researchers who were going to be inventing things that were not even known then, that may not have had any practical application. So this is the process of reasoning and discovery and engagement that occurred there in universities in addition to education and training the workforce. By involving the workforce in this act of discovery and invention that allowed us to create new things, new ideas that eventually would come out to be commercialized and reach the hands of the consumer or the patient, or the person on the street. And this is really what powered the United States' growth to be a world power with the best scientific expertise, where everybody in the world comes, even now, to engage in research. I mean, the research universities in America are the envy of the world. And yes, other countries have research universities, too. But the scale and the power and the impact that the United States has on world research is unrivaled. And the products that come out of that are unrivaled, which is why people from all over the world, students from all over the world, still come to the U.S. to pursue graduate education and undergraduate education and to be part of this amazing discovery and invention engine that is supported by the federal government, the state government, private industry, foundations, an amazing network of funding agencies that we have here that really have made the United States the destination to be in terms of research.
- And just think about the modern conveniences that we have started in someone's laboratory. I think about what it's like to have a microwave. I remember when microwaves first came out, I bought my mother a microwave and I spent what must have been the equivalent of $2,000 buying her a microwave because I'd seen this thing. And by the way, it was a monstrosity. It was huge. And now they're very inexpensive. But you can't imagine not having a microwave in your house. But it started in someone's laboratory.
- Started as what's called a klystron, which I only know that because of my background in electrical engineering. And I taught electromagnetics for a while. And it was really a curiosity on how to take atoms and vibrate them at the same vibration frequency of the molecules of water, which is how a microwave works. You know, it heats up water molecules, and that's why you can't really fry in a microwave, but you can steam and heat in a microwave. And so it was really an invention that had nothing to do with the food industry.
- And now it's ubiquitous. I mean, you have to have that. And every restaurant's got them, and every household's got them. And you don't think about that probably started in someone's lab somewhere. And they were thinking, I can do this thing. And then someone said, well, I wonder, can you cook food with this? And then they said, well, we can. And they probably created this big box, and they heated something up. And they went, well, I wonder if we can commercialize that. And then you have a whole commercialization process that is, we could actually talk a little bit about that as well. So it's research, discovery, learning more things about our universe and about, you know, the world around us, and then about how we can make our world better through the production of this, through the use and the capitalization on this new knowledge.
- And the knowledge that starts in the lab and goes into one area quickly starts to spread. So, you know, when we figured out how to build klystrons, we could expand on them and start to build MRI machines, magnetic resonance imaging, which is now ubiquitous in medical imaging. So you sometimes cannot even predict where the initial discovery leads and where the inventions go. And that's the other thing that the United States and research universities do very well. Because when particularly the federal or the state government funds these universities and inventions come out and they get commercialized, that means patented and licensed, the feds and the states say, well, you know, go do that because that creates jobs and creates economic development and improves the lives of citizens. All the government needs is a royalty-free license to use that piece of equipment. But one of the brilliance of what happens and comes out of a university is, it's not just the invention and the application of that invention, but the fact that these universities are now job creation engines. Started off at Stanford with these university research paths, went on to Penn, you know, in the University City Science Center, over in Philly, then of course, Georgia Tech, you know, is a great powerhouse, and then of course, the Research Triangle Park, and that is now spreading everywhere, including Texas State University, where we have our STAR Park, which is the bridge between the university and private industry where technologies that spin out of the institution can go meet the marketplace.
- Talk about now where we are with the Run to R1 and about what we're doing to get us there. I mean, I keep telling them, this cake is baked. It's in the oven. It's going to happen, but what have we done to get us there?
- The Carnegie Foundation has provided clear indication of what does it take for a university to be classified as an R1 institution. There are two metrics. One is the total research expenditures, that is how much money is spent on research, which is funded by the government, federal, and state, and private industry. and also how many doctoral graduates do we graduate each year. So the threshold in research expenditures is $50 million. I have to say that just this last year, Texas State was at $165 million in research expenditures.
- So we're way above-
- We're over three times. We are doing very well. It's a testament to really our faculty's expertise, the faculty that are here and the faculty that we have been recruiting. So this is what we have been doing. We have been very competitive in recruiting top talent from across the country in areas like AI, in areas like water and the environment, in semiconductor chips-
- Chip manufacturing.
- Chip manufacturing. All these very critical industry and needs for America because out here our motto is research with relevance. So applied research, so we are recruiting top notch faculty from across the country, giving them very competitive startup funding out here to entice them to come to Texas and Texas State. So that's one thing we're doing. The other is we are investing in both our existing Ph.D. programs and the new Ph.D. programs. We have double the number of Ph.D. programs here, particularly in areas of science and engineering that we did not have. And so we have made significant investments in those so that we can recruit students. The net result of all of this is there's a threshold for 70 doctoral students to be graduated from the university to get to R1. We graduated, we are, excuse me, there's a threshold of 70 graduate students to be classified as R1. This year, we are graduating 80 students.
- And we did 72 last year.
- 71 last year.
- 71 last year. I was counting one extra.
- And then you know we are well and so we have to at least do 59 next year, which means we are definitely well on the way to R1.
- And we'll have way more than 59 next year, right?
- Absolutely. So, you know, we already operate like an R1 university in terms of our research expenditures, and we will be one because of the growth in our Ph.D. graduates.
- And, you know, I think it's important for people to understand that this wasn't just, this isn't a three-year deal. I mean, we've done a lot in the past three years, but we have been gradually growing our research expertise by hiring faculty and so on. And our externally funded research has had big growth recently, but we've been building up to it. What was holding us back was the number of Ph.D. graduates. And part of that was politics and history. We weren't allowed to have doctoral programs for a long time. And then 20 years ago, we got our first doctoral program. But in 125 years, we had 14 doctoral programs. And then in one year, we add 11. And that's a record, right? And so it's gotta be a record in Texas, adding a number of doctorate programs. And so we've got our faculty who are doing research like crazy, and the metric for that is how much money they're generating. Then we've got our students that are, you know, cranking out their dissertations and getting their Ph.D.s done. And so it's just a matter of time, and you have to do this for three years in a row. And at the end of the third year, they say, "You're an R1." And so when's that gonna happen?
- We'll have met-
- I didn't say if that's gonna happen, I said when is it gonna happen?
- We'll have met all our metrics by 2027, because that is when the next time Carnegie is going to measure all this, and they'll make the announcement in early 2028.
- Early '28, they'll announce and we'll be in R1. We'll, you know, it's never done 'til it's done. Even when we know the numbers, until you get that email saying, here's what you are, you and I will be waiting in suspense, but then we'll have a celebration like you've never seen before. We'll get some fireworks going and so on-
- And a parade.
- And a parade.
- We'll be, I'm confident that we're getting there.
- Well, you're an event guy though, because I think you understand that until people see it and feel it and touch it, it doesn't feel real. About a year and a half ago, when we kind of kicked off the Run to R1, one of your staff members said, "We should do a run." And you went, "No, that's silly." And then you said, "No, wait, we should do it." And so we all had headbands, and we actually went and ran around campus.
- And you know, the best thing was many, many people on campus joined us. We were worried whether-
- The faculty and staff showed up, the students-
- It was a huge event, and so maybe we should do another run.
- We should do another run.
- You know, going past the tape, the breast of tape that says R1.
- We'll have R1, we'll go through the tape together.
- I think that's what we should do.
- That's great.
- We have a plan.
- Shreek, it's been a great three years working with you, and I've loved watching you build your team and encouraging the faculty. We haven't even talked about all the inventions that have come about. You've got a whole new patent office, and people are inventing things, and pretty soon we'll start benefiting from that financially from the inventions that come here. But you've helped us, you've helped inspire us to think about how we can become an R1 institution. By the way, R1 isn't better than R2. These aren't rankings-
- It's different.
- They're just different. And you've helped us become different. And I couldn't be prouder of you and our faculty, our staff, and our students who have come together to do something pretty special that will put us in a group of institutions that is pretty rare error. How many R1s are there right now?
- About 170 something.
- About 170. So I mean, these are the-
- Thousands of universities.
- 4,000 colleges and universities around the country, 170 are R1. And these are the people we really, the universities we've always aspired to be like, and now we will be like them. And we'll not have to say, "Hey, we want to be as good as those ones." We'll actually be doing that and be compared to them. And actually, our numbers are very comparable to people who already are R1s.
- Absolutely.
- And so-
- Much better than several in Texas who are already R1s.
- Absolutely.
- So thank you for doing that. And thank you for spending a little bit of time here, three years later to talk about the Run to R1.
- Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for all your support. It's an honor to work here as a vice president for research and work here in Texas State and the state of Texas.
- Now, Shreek, we have a kind of a fun thing we do at the podcast. Our listeners submit questions that they want to ask me. And I'm not seeing the questions. I'm going to give this to you and let you ask the question.
- What's your favorite kind of weather and why?
- Holy cow. That's a great question. You know, I did grow up in Canada, which is a lot like Bangalore. It's not like Bangalore at all.
- It's not like Bangalore at all.
- So I actually love it when it snows. I like it when it's snowing. And people say they don't like that. But you watch this place when it snows. People will be taking pictures of it, and they'll be outside and they'll be making snowmen. And I love it when it snows. I don't like, like my mom's birthday was September 29 and she always complained that there was snow on her birthday. And I saw snow every month of the year growing up. And so going up in the mountains and so on, and it'd be August, it'd be, you know, warmer down in the plains, but up in the mountains it'd be snowing. And so I'm used to snow. I don't like snow that lasts like for eight months. That's too much. but I love the first snowfall, and I love what a place looks like. It just looks different when it's got an inch of snow on it. So that's my favorite time. What about you?
- I used to think my favorite time was fall, living in the Northeast, and the colors changing and all that. But having moved to Texas, my dear colleague of the cabinet, Lisa Lloyd, has taught me the art of river sitting.
- Yes, she loves to just go sit in the river.
- So, but you can-
- Which is a very Hill Country kind of thing to do.
- But you can river sit only when it's 100 degrees outside.
- It has to be-
- And the water is like, 72 degrees.
- It's like a bathtub, right?
- The water is cold if you sit at the Guadalupe, and then the temperature outside is 100 degrees.
- So you have your feet in the cold water.
- Not just feet, you have a low chair, so you're kind of sitting in the water. The critical thing is--
- You're drinking a Diet Dr Pepper.
- Something like that. The key thing is you have to balance your beverage and balance yourself and not get swept away in the flowing river when it's 100 degrees. So my favorite kind of weather right now, believe it or not, is midsummer in Texas Hill Country, sitting in a river.
- That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for joining us in the podcast. And thank you for joining us as well. It's always a great opportunity to learn more about what's happening here at Texas State. All right, until next time, States Up, everyone.