Today I want to go on record as being a Marshall University football fan who is pleased with the hiring of “Doc” Holliday as the new head coach, even as I note the absurdity of a $600,000 per year salary for teaching young men how to hang on to an oblong ball.  (Having said that, hanging on to an oblong ball can be quite a feat.  Just ask any Mountaineer fan who watched the Auburn game.)

Besides having a cool nickname, Doc Holliday seems to have made favorable impressions virtually everywhere.  Yet despite this, I’m reading vitriolic comments from both the Marshall University and West Virginia University faithful attacking the choice because of this local boy’s toils for West Virginia University or his new-found allegiance.

Unless they are playing Marshall University, I cheer for the Mountaineers.  Unless they are playing West Virginia University, most of my Mountaineer friends cheer for the Herd.  I really don’t understand the ill will of some fans toward the other school.

This is one MU and WVU fan who wishes Doc Holliday the best.

PS: For those of you wondering from whence the title of this post comes, those words are reputed to have been the last ever uttered by the other, only slightly-more-infamous “Doc” Holliday.

While I am generally sympathetic to the Sierra Club cause, I think their opposition to these gifts is wrong-headed.  In my perfect world, West Virginia University, which actually has a competitive advantage in the field of energy research, would become a leader in the alternative and renewable energy fields.  To do that, they need money from people in the energy industry – and for good or ill, that includes people like Murray and Blankenship, who at least understand the potential benefits of energy research, even if their statements about global warming and other issues are far afield.

It would be great if higher education institutions never took money from benefactors who did not-so-good things, but we wouldn’t have some of the world’s finest educational institutions without the benefit of some ill-gotten gains – Duke University (built by tobacco), Carnegie Mellon University, and Rockefeller University, just to name a few.

(a)   The Journal of the American Medical Association?

(b)   The New England Journal of Medicine?

(c)   Brain: A Journal of Neurology?

(d)   The Journal of Neuroscience?

(e)   GQ?

If you guessed (e), you, of course, are correct.  In between articles titled “Why We’re Wild About Olivia Wilde: A Sexy Video and Exclusive Photos,” “I Kissed a Teenage Lesbian (and I Liked It)” and “Me Talk Presidential One Day” (I wonder which of these three links is destined to become my blog’s most clicked link ever) is an article titled “Game Brain” about Dr. Bailes’s research.

It is my understanding that West Virginia Mountaineer football coach Bill Stewart will be in attendance. He hopes to turn back time to Saturday night so that his team can have another chance to hold on to the football.

I note in reviewing the WVU Foundation website that the Research Trust Fund is dead last on the gift priorities drop-down list and doesn’t even make the “donate online” list, even though the State of West Virginia matches those contributions dollar for dollar.  I thought research funding was one of WVU’s top priorities.  Does the Foundation not agree?  Whatever else you might say about Robert Murray, and a lot is being said, he made the most of his contribution to WVU.

Bob Murray is the President of Murray Energy Corporation.  Murray Energy owns Utah’s Crandall Canyon mine, where nine people lost their lives in August 2007.  You may remember that Mr. Murray initially came across as a sympathetic character in media broadcasts, but opinions changed as the investigation unfolded and it became clear that the accident was the result of serious safety violations and $1.6 million in fines were imposed against the mine operator.

As you would expect, WVU accepted the money and said nothing about Mr. Murray’s controversial past.  I think they did the right thing.

• U.S. News and World Report places WVU in the third tier (of four) among national universities and its law school in the third tier among all law schools.  (WVU’s law school was in the fourth tier a few years ago, so this is progress.)
• The Princeton Review ranks WVU sixth nationally in terms of partying and eighth in terms of beer affinity.  Apparently seeking to add a little humor to the discussion of partying and beer affinity, the Quick and the Ed blog recently published the graduation rates of the Princeton Review’s beer-loving and beer-hating schools and found that students at beer-loving institutions had an average six-year graduation rate of 77.5 percent, while those at beer-hating institutions had a 63 percent graduation rate.  The one anomaly among the beer-loving schools: WVU with a 55 percent graduation rate.  (Partying schools, by contrast, had lower graduation rates than non-partying schools thanks in part to WVU’s lower-than-average graduation rate.)
• The Washington Monthly ranks schools in terms of their contribution to the public good: (1) Social Mobility: How well do colleges perform at recruiting and graduating low-income students?; (2) Research: How well do colleges do at producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.Ds?; and (3) Service: Do colleges encourage students to give back to their country?  Where does West Virginia University rank among national universities?  162 out of 258.  Interestingly, WVU does a slightly better-than-average job of graduating students when one considers the percentage of students receiving Pell grants.  Where does West Virginia University do really badly?  In federal work-study funds spent on service and in faculty both receiving significant research awards and in the National Academies.

So how will West Virginia University rank in the soon-to-be-released National Research Council (National Academies) rankings of various graduate programs, which are widely considered to be the most statistically rigorous and credible rankings around?  You don’t have to wait for the results.  I provided the answer on 26 June 2009.

Lesson No. 1: If investment returns sound too good to be true, they are.

Harvard University got used to double-digit endowment investment returns throughout the early part of this decade and believed they would continue forever.  But at one point last year, Harvard reported an $8 billion, or 22 percent, loss in the value of its endowment over a four month period.  To put that number in perspective, it’s more than 40 percent of West Virginia’s ENTIRE state budget if you include everything from federal revenue to special revenue like West Virginia higher education’s total tuition and fees.  Why did Harvard go from doing so well to doing so badly so quickly?  It was investing significant amounts in high-risk/high-return activities (e.g., high-tech start-ups, credit default swaps, cross-currency swaps, venture capital funds, junk bonds).  What has Harvard had to do to address this crisis?  Sell off parts of its investment portfolio at bargain basement prices and seek bonding at the worst possible time financially – December 2008.  One commenter characterizes the situation in which Harvard finds itself now as a “death spiral.”

In Senate Bill No. 603 (2005), the West Virginia Legislature gave West Virginia University and Marshall University authority to invest a portion of their state funds through their foundations instead of through the Treasurer’s low-risk, low-return options.  Both institutions were slow to take advantage of this flexibility, but ultimately did so – and, I’m pretty sure, have lost money as a result.  The greater flexibility couldn’t have been given at a worse time for those two institutions.

Lesson No. 2: Build what you can afford.

Harvard University initiated an overly ambitious building program, which included construction of a $1.2 billion science complex, that had to be halted.  To put this last amount in perspective, the proposed cost is about twice the ENTIRE annual state appropriation for West Virginia’s higher education system.

Have any West Virginia schools engaged in an ambitious building program that has proven difficult to pay for?  Yes – Fairmont State University.  The debt was undertaken assuming that more students would enroll and thus help shoulder the increased debt.  Shortly after the debt was incurred, enrollment began to drop – stretching the University’s resources.

On Sunday, Charleston Gazette reporter Eric Eyre wrote about the Dow Technology Center.  The article was titled “Supporters try to save South Charleston Tech Park,” which says about all that needs to be said about the current status of the Tech Center.

Unlike Kinetic Park and the WVU Research Park, which have never succeeded in getting off the ground, the Dow Tech Center has a storied past.  Located on a relatively flat area between I-64 and Corridor G in South Charleston, the Union Carbide Tech Center opened in 1949; employed as many as 3,500 chemists, technicians, researchers and engineers in its heyday; and produced more than 30,000 patents worth $18 billion, according to the article.  Intriguingly, this was done in an area without a research university or a significant educational pipeline of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates.  (Nearby West Virginia Tech produced engineering graduates, but not in the quantities or advanced degrees needed to support a major research facility.)

Over the last several decades, the South Charleston Tech Center has fallen on hard times.  With the exception of the Mid-Atlantic Technology Research and Innovation Center (MATRIC), with about 150 employees, not much remains of the Tech Center.  The article quotes a MATRIC employee as saying: “There’s a lot of intellectual capital left in the valley.  This is an ideal place for technology development.  It’s like Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.”  I don’t think this assessment is correct.  While Union Carbide invested millions, if not billions, of dollars in the Tech Center and brought smart people from all over the nation and world to the Kanawha Valley, it is very unlikely that another private sector entity would do the same.  Why not?

• Intellectual Capital.  Unlike Research Triangle Park, which is surrounded by Duke University, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, the Tech Center is surrounded by West Virginia State University and the University of Charleston, neither of which has the kinds of strong STEM programs needed to support the Tech Center, and West Virginia University Institute of Technology, which has some of the programs, but is struggling at best, dying at worst.  Furthermore, WVU-Tech’s last foray in the direction of the Dow Tech Center was an unmitigated disaster; just ask the “Take Back Tech” folks.
• Environmental Issues.  Having been aware of at least two efforts to assess environmental conditions at the Center, I know there are widely divergent opinions.  Clearly, there are serious environmental issues associated with a sediment pond on the property.  Beyond that, some people think the site is quite habitable.  Regardless, any time an environmental cloud hangs over a piece of property, it presents serious challenges for any marketer of that property.
• The Owner.  Dow Chemical, which owns the property, faces a financial dilemma.  It has a series of old buildings on property that is of little use to it now, and there’s no single buyer on the horizon willing to take all the property off its hands.  So rather than continue to maintain buildings that are partially occupied, Dow is beginning to level them to reduce maintenance costs.  Additionally, Dow is not the easiest company with which to deal on property issues, I have been told.

Keeping with our dermatological theme, can West Virginia University and/or Marshall University provide the necessary chemical peel?  No.  Neither institution has the critical research mass needed on its home campus.  If significant institutional resources were redirected to South Charleston, it probably would weaken both institutions’ current research-building efforts.  Additionally, there is little likelihood of a new infusion of external resources at either institution to support such an endeavor.

Can West Virginia’s state government provide the necessary chemical peel?  Not without taking an incredible risk.  If the property ended up in the hands of the State, the State also would inherit a set of old facilities that need to be maintained and some serious environmental questions.  Additionally, the State would have to find a significant number of new tenants for the site.  All one has to do is tour facilities on the Capitol Complex to appreciate what a poor landlord the State historically has been.

What’s the best-case scenario?  Create a consortium of educational and private sector organizations in addition to MATRIC to serve as anchor tenants at the Tech Center.  On the education front, create a higher education center, much like the one in Beckley, which has the potential to thrive and grow, and locate the Kanawha Valley’s new Advanced Technology Center on the site.  On the private sector front, market, market, market the Center to anyone and everyone who might have the slightest interest.  It’s a long shot, but I think it’s probably the best shot we have.

The strangest part of the WSAZ story concerned site infrastructure.  Dr. Susan Touma, the on-site dermatologist (an anchor tenant for nerdy technology types?), told the reporter: “We had phone lines put in and a lot of different other things that weren’t in place.”  WSAZ went on to report that contractors were just laying cable for TV and high speed internet access yesterday.  How on earth can you claim to have a technology park when you don’t even have high speed internet access available on your site?  I had always assumed that Kinetic Park had not succeeded because of the lack of needed entrepreneurial talent in Huntington.  Now I learn it may have been the lack of internet?

Before anyone in Morgantown laughs about the plight of Huntington’s Kinetic Park, please take a tour of the West Virginia University Research Park on Route 705 in what otherwise is a booming area of Morgantown.  According to a November 2002 WVU press release about the Research Park, then Vice President for Research John Weete said: “It is fully expected that the WVU Research Park will become a self-sufficient, cost-effective, world-class center of research, technology development, commercialization and business activity resulting from strong links between the park occupants and the intellectual capital of WVU”  … in “multi-tenant buildings totaling approximately 650,000 square feet of space.”  This quote is not intended to be a clue to help you locate the site.  All I can say is: Look for the West Virginia equivalent of sagebrush.  If any place has the sagebrush market cornered, it’s West Virginia University’s Research Park.

As someone will surely tell me, the heartbreak of psoriasis is no laughing matter.  We need to figure out why Kinetic Park, WVU’s Research Park and the Dow Technology Center in South Charleston are in their present conditions and what, if anything, we might be able to do to change it.

I had several opportunities over the last year to interact with and observe Dr. Peter Magrath.  He never failed to impress.  In fact, if I had to pick one word to describe him, it’s “presidential.”  He always knew exactly what needed saying or doing by someone in his position.  He also led West Virginia University out of one of the darkest times in its history.  West Virginia  and West Virginia University are better places for his passing through.

This week’s edition contains an interesting article about some federally-funded research conducted by WVU health sciences faculty who also moonlight as expert witnesses in railroad workers’ solvents exposure cases.

Several points worth making:

• For those of you who think lawyers are whores, you haven’t met a real whore until you’ve met some of the “expert” witnesses that are paraded regularly through our courtroom doors.  Indeed in all my years associated with the legal system, I can think of only a handful of times when an expert produced an opinion that was inconsistent with what the person paying his or her bill wanted him or her to find.
• The work of James Turner and others in exposing the WVU researchers’ questionable work is an example of fine lawyering.  Lawyers have to become experts themselves to challenge expert witnesses effectively.  Mr. Turner appears to have left no stone unturned in getting to the bottom of this matter.
• If the allegations are true, several remedies are available to address it.  There are federal criminal and civil penalties for research fraud and/or misuse of federal funds, as well as penalties for perjury.  Furthermore, WVU has a system whereby tenured faculty can be stripped of both tenure and their jobs if allegations like these turn out to be true.  Finally, courts can sanction lawyers and others who knowingly perpetrate frauds like this on the court.
• I note that Mr. Turner hired as his expert a University of Michigan neurology professor.  The University of Michigan is one of the nation’s premier research universities  and member of the Association of American Universities.  See “To Research or Not to Research?  That Is the Question.”

I have mixed feelings about Dr. Berdahl’s proposal.  On the one hand, I think every higher education institution should be free to compete for scarce research grant dollars from NSF, NIH and other organizations.  If there is any arena in which free market and merit principles should operate, it is in the fields of education and research.  On the other hand, I know that Congress has provided more and more institutions with earmarks for research without regard to merit and that West Virginia University and Marshall University both have struggled to come up with the modest amounts of matching funds required by West Virginia’s own Research Trust Fund program, which suggests that neither institution is ready to move into the upper echelons of American research universities any time soon.

*West Virginia University is listed in the Carnegie classification system as having “high,” rather than “very high,” research activity, which places it behind at least 96 other higher education institutions in terms of research activity.  Additionally, West Virginia University will not appear anywhere on the soon-to-be-released and very prestigious National Research Council rankings of graduate programs at over 222 higher education institutions because it didn’t even participate!  I challenge someone to review the list and attempt to identify ONE other state without a participating institution (HINT: There is one other state.) or ONE of West Virginia University’s peer institutions that did not participate.  More on this subject when the rankings are released.