When President Hartzell introduced our university’s new strategic direction, we made a collective commitment to become the world’s highest-impact public university and achieve our goals through long-term efforts in support of our people, place and pursuits. UT’s research mission — and our ability to change the world through innovation, scholarship and creative arts — is at the core of this aspiration.
But to maximize our impact on society and ensure that our world-class research community has what it needs to be the best, we must continue to build an infrastructure that supports scholarship in all its forms — across all disciplines.
Since Dan Jaffe was appointed vice president for research in 2016, he has made it his priority to expand the resources offered through the Office of the Vice President for Research while developing new ways to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. If STEM fields help us understand how the world works, he has said, then it’s the arts, humanities and creative fields that help us understand our place in it. One is often incomplete without the other.
It is in this spirit and in support of the university’s strategic vision that we are announcing today the renaming of the Office of the Vice President for Research. From today forward, it will be called the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors.
For those of you who have already worked closely with their staff — either by strategizing with the Research Development team or participating in one of their many transdisciplinary research initiatives — you probably know firsthand the breadth and depth of what they offer in support of bold ideas across campus. With new investments and additional personnel in support of the humanities and creative disciplines, the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors now offers many important programs and funding opportunities available to any principal investigator on campus:
