Tech Surpasses Research Funding Goal 1 Year Early

Tennessee Tech has reached some $45 million in research funding this year, surpassing their original goal to hit $40 million by next year.

Vice President of Research and Economic Development John Liu credits the success to the collective work of university faculty and President Phil Oldham’s vision. Liu said the success is inspirational because the goal seemed so high when it was first put into place.

“Just as short as several years back seems to be impossible,” Liu said. “Now we are achieving, we have achieved these goals ahead of time, so that gives our faculty a lot of more confidence, a lot of more aspiration as to yes, we can do it.”

Liu said the increased research funding will allow the University to improve the output and impact of the research they do. He said it will also allow them to make research more prevalent throughout the rest of the school and involve more undergraduate students.

“We have been doing it, but we want to significantly increase opportunities for our undergraduate students,” Liu said. “Eventually, we would like every single student to be able to do research in their college years here at Tech if they want to do it.”

Liu said giving undergraduate students more opportunities to do research would make their lives easier when searching for jobs and allow them to get better-paying jobs.

“Through problem-solving, communication, leadership, and such process, research would provide a venue for them to learn such, you know, skills,” Liu said. “People call that durable skills, but it’s really useful for lifetime-long.”

Liu said the increase in research will also improve the university’s scholarships and the capabilities of its faculty.

“They can teach students with state-of-the-art – what’s going on in the real world in computation, rather than just teach students from textbooks,” Liu said.

Liu said the original goal was set several years ago when the school decided to try and double their research funding from $20 million to $40 million over a five-year period.

“We are fairly ambitious in a way, so we do not know exactly what the next goal should be, but we have been in awe too,” Liu said. “And over time, we are going to increase further our research funding.”