Sophia Cortez 
Valeria Tokun Haga/THE RIDER and THE RIDER FILE PHOTOS
UTRGV reached a sum over $100 million in research funding on Oct. 14, celebrating its 10-year anniversary and positioning the university one step closer to becoming a Carnegie R1 institution.
The Carnegie classification is a leading framework for recognizing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education, by 1970 it began supporting colleges and universities in their research and policy analysis programs, according to the website of Carnegie of Institution of Higher Education.
Can Saygin, senior vice president for Research and Dean of Graduate College, told The Rider achieving the $103.7 million milestone is more than financial progress.
“The money is going toward graduate students, faculty time, equipment, laboratory methodologies and any infrastructure that’s really geared towards achieving these research goals,” Saygin said.
The Rider asked the senior vice president how the success of faculty and student researchers across different disciplines is recognized and supported.
“We went from writing 400 proposals a year to 670 proposals a year,” Saygin replied. “Writing good proposals brings you more rewards, and the next challenge becomes spending the money that you receive.”
He said collaboration between departments has helped reach this milestone.
“It’s a full-team effort that made this happen … and another group is the accounts payable,” Saygin said. “We have several grants that we work with other universities, which means other universities are subawardees. That means we pay them. So expediting the payment to them shows expenditures on the UTRGV side.”
Subhash Chauhan, professor of immunology and microbiology and director of the South Texas Center of Excellence in Cancer Research at the UTRGV School of Medicine, said the achievement is a sign of how far the institution has come in just a decade.
“UTRGV is just a 10 years old institution,” Chauhan said. “We are just celebrating the 10th anniversary. For that kind of a young institution, it’s a really big milestone.”
The director added the funding directly affects students by providing more reinforced programs and more opportunities.
“Since UTRGV is receiving this good amount of funding, it creates a lot of infrastructure and a lot of opportunities for students, undergraduate students or graduate students,” he said. “… Bottom line is, it really matters a lot for our future generation.”
Chauhan added research is a long-term investment.
“Research is not for the present, it’s for the future generation to come,” he said. “Whatever we are doing here, it is going to create a really good infrastructure for our future generation to come, and it will help them immensely a lot.”
The funding helps support new doctoral programs across disciplines, adding onto why students can stay in the Rio Grande Valley, according to Chauhan.
“So, the idea is like we like to keep our students here but, for that, we need to have infrastructure, and this funding obviously helps us to retain our people here,” he said.
For students such as Vijay Radhakrishnan, a biology senior, the expansion in research opportunities has made a difference.
“I work as a student assistant, but I think it’s really good,” Radhakrishnan said. “It gives students an opportunity to get more experience in research and just kind of working with the teams. And everything is a really good experience.”
As UTRGV continues progressing toward Carnegie R1 status, both administrators and students have a common goal: expanding opportunity while uplifting the region, according to Saygin.
“Trust yourself, trust the university, trust the administration, this is just the beginning, we are going to be doing so many other amazing things,” the senior vice president said.
Valeria Tokun Haga/THE RIDER GRAPHIC
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