Click on the graphs below to view at full-size. Figures are based on data collected from the Agricultural Business Services Office and the CAFNR faculty reporting system for the 2002 calendar year.

• Total CAFNR employees

• Percentage grant-funded

• Scholarship

• Service per faculty

An often-heard challenge in our office is to balance the emphasis on money and grants with other works from the College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources (CAFNR). The emphasis on grants and fiscal data are not only a result of their ease of documentation; they are critical to the function and operation of higher education today. Our ability to earn over three dollars for every dollar of state funding is a critical contribution CAFNR makes to Mizzou and Missouri. Still, I do firmly believe the saying, ‘you get what you measure,’ so let’s look at ourselves and other kinds of scholarly and service contributions.

The CAFNR population – who we are
For the past ten years, CAFNR has kept close to 800 total employees, or Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) as the accountants like to call us. We are broadly defined into one of three categories; tenure-track faculty, professional (the non-tenure track) faculty, and support staff. The accompanying figure (left) notes that the numbers and ratio among these categories has been fairly consistent over the past decade. We have kept a 1:1:2 ratio for tenure-track, professional-track, and staff numbers, respectively.

While in numbers we have remained fairly stable, the source of funding to support our population has changed significantly. A decade or more ago, two out of every three CAFNR employees (or more) were supported by ‘hard’ or recurring state/federal funds. Today, approximately half of all CAFNR employees are supported by grant funds. This is particularly true of professional-track faculty (over 75 percent are supported on grants) and staff (over 55 percent are grant funded). Tenure-track faculty remain the only employee category not reliant upon grants for salary support (usually 10 percent or less are funded off grants).

Metrics beyond money
For the past two years, CAFNR has pioneered a reporting system used by a growing number of land-grant colleges of agriculture. Referred to as the CAFNR faculty reporting system (CFRS), the Web-based reporting system has been refined by Sandy Monson and Greg Rotert specifically for our use and is suited for the teaching, research, and extension missions of CAFNR.

The system has been adopted by CAFNR Units as the prime reporting mechanism used during annual performance evaluations. During the last reporting year (2002), a total of 256 faculty (mostly tenure track) used the system. Since reports are input and summarized on a calendar-year basis, the time is nearing to input the 2003 data.

Let’s look at a summary of what was reported last year.

Scholarship
Faculty productivity is measured in lots of ways beyond funding alone. In previous issues of Synthesis data were presented that show CAFNR advises more than 35 undergraduate and seven graduate students per faculty member. Data also exist that reveal that we not only carry heavy teaching loads, but the outcomes have high impact as demonstrated by high retention rates and high graduation rates. Another measure of scholarly activity includes the production of publications, both peer-reviewed and those written for extension and/or general public audiences. Based upon the faculty who used the Faculty Reporting System last year, CAFNR faculty average about 2.5 peer reviewed, and five general publications per year (see figure at left for Unit means).

Service
Faculty also contribute their time and talent to both professional societies and organizations nationally and to the general public serving as speakers and teachers in various forums across the state and nation. Some of these are measurable and captured in the CFRS. For example, CAFNR faculty average almost one professional service function each when measured by serving as a professional journal reviewer and/or grant panel reviewer. And, though it varies widely by Unit, CAFNR faculty average just under four public presentations per year.

Such public access and visibility is not only important in providing expertise to fulfill the extension mission of CAFNR, but also to give our faculty the opportunity to listen to the citizens we serve. Nothing substitutes for a face-to-face meeting and the first-hand learning that comes from participating in public forums.

While there are innumerable other ways to account and tabulate our activity and impact, from my perspective, the CFRS represents a database invaluable in providing the opportunity to summarize the breadth of CAFNR’s impact beyond money alone. As you contemplate recording yet another year of activity for your own benefit, I would encourage you to consider the overall benefit of accurately providing your data. Like it or not, what we measure, it seems we can achieve!

Regards, John