NSF/Council of Graduate Schools taps KU research leader Barnhill for D.C. post

LAWRENCE -- Robert E. Barnhill, vice provost for research and president of the KU Center for Research at the University of Kansas since 1997, will begin a prestigious yearlong assignment Sept. 1 as the National Science Foundation/Council of Graduate Schools' dean-in-residence in Washington, D.C.

Associate Vice Provost James A. Roberts will serve as the interim vice provost during the next year, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor David Shulenburger announced. A national search to name a permanent vice provost by July 1, 2004, will begin later this year.

"The university and Bob Barnhill are honored by his invitation to serve as a dean-in-residence," Shulenburger said. "We are also very fortunate to have someone of Jim Roberts' experience and talent who will be able to assume leadership of the KU Center for Research on this short notice. Because Bob and Jim have worked so closely together since the center's inception, I believe this transition in leadership will be as seamless as such operations can be."

Barnhill will return to KU upon his completion of this dean-in-residence position next fall as professor of mathematics and of electrical engineering and computer science. He also will serve as a KU Center for Research senior scholar.

When Barnhill arrived at KU's Lawrence campus six years ago, external research proposals had declined for two years in a row. Since then, research funding has doubled and KU's market share of federal and other funding has been among the fastest increasing in the nation. In fiscal year 2002, the most current figures available, KU's total research expenditures reached $243 million, an increase of 8.4 percent from the previous record of $224 million, set in fiscal year 2001. It also marked the sixth consecutive year that KU research expenditures increased.

Barnhill also initiated the Research!America poll of Kansas citizens' attitudes toward university research, which resulted in the state Legislature passing a research bonding bill in 2002 despite a serious budget crunch.

"My most important accomplishment at KU is to help improve the ambience for research on the campus," Barnhill said. "Faculty, staff and students all talk about research as an everyday activity. There is excitement in the air about doing new things."

His assignment in Washington, D.C., is to help coordination between the two sponsoring organizations, and on furthering collaboration between academic research and graduate education. In addition, he will work with his wife, Marigold Linton, who will continue as director of American Indian Outreach at KU, to increase the number of American Indians who prepare for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

A fourth-generation Kansan and Lawrence native, Barnhill earned his bachelor's degree from KU in 1961 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1964. He returned to KU in 1997 as the vice chancellor for research and public service and president of the KU Center for Research. He previously was a faculty member at the University of Utah for 22 years and helped create the field of computer-aided geometric design. He later went to Arizona State University, where he served for five years as computer science department chair and six years as vice president for research, during which time external research funding doubled and ASU became a Carnegie Research I university.

Roberts, the interim vice provost, has been associate vice provost since 1999. A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a national professional association, Roberts joined KU in 1990 as chair and professor of the electrical engineering and computer science department. He previously worked 21 years for TRW Inc., now owned by Northrop Grumman, and ESL Inc. in California and Colorado. He earned his bachelor's degree at KU in 1966, a master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 and his doctorate in electrical engineering at Santa Clara University in 1979.

About the Council on Graduate Schools
The organization is dedicated to the improvement of graduate education and serves as a communications link among its member institutions, Congress, the news media and the general public.

The NSF/CGS dean-in-residence program was created to provide a new mechanism for ongoing and substantive communications between senior administrators at universities providing graduate education and the NSF, a major funder of graduate support programs. The program is a distinct opportunity for an outstanding graduate dean to bring to the NSF insights, perspectives and the practical experience of a senior administrator at a research university. In turn, the dean will communicate with graduate deans, as well as broader science and engineering faculty, NSF's perspective on graduate education.