Katsouleas helps UConn boost research funding, despite COVID-19’s challenges

HBJ Photo | Sean Teehan University of Connecticut President Thomas Katsouleas.

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By Sean Teehan

2020 represented the ultimate trial by fire for UConn President Thomas Katsouleas.

When he talked to HBJ a year ago about his plans for the new decade's first 52 weeks, the conversation revolved around significantly ramping up the school's research funding (to $500 million a year over the next decade), boosting innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives and returning UConn athletics' to the Big East conference.

COVID-19 wasn't mentioned.

However, about three months into the year, the pandemic tore through Connecticut, forcing UConn to close its campuses and leading to the university's current $76-million budget shortfall — mostly due to evaporating housing and dining service revenues. While that's forced Katsouleas to make some difficult cost-cutting decisions, his strategy to significantly boost UConn’s research and innovation efforts didn’t lose steam, he said.

In fact, the school made some significant strides in that area this year, despite COVID’s challenges.

For example, new research awards at UConn and UConn Health reached $286 million in fiscal year 2020, a 7% increase over the previous year, Katsouleas said. UConn and UConn Health faculty also spent nearly $250 million in expenditures for research and other sponsored activity, the highest combined annual amount in the school’s history.

Meantime, startup companies in UConn's Technology Incubation Program (TIP) in Farmington and Storrs raised a record $420 million over the past year, Katsouleas said. That nearly equals funding TIP companies raised over the previous four years combined.

And for the first time ever, UConn earned a top 30 ranking for graduate entrepreneurship from Princeton Review. Katsouleas said he plans to hire 10 new faculty for entrepreneurship and innovation programs in 2021.

"COVID has not really changed the direction of the university but has elevated the need for what we're doing," Katsouleas said. "We're almost on track for what we had planned. I think innovation and entrepreneurship are permeating across the campuses as a cultural identity.”

Check out our other 2020 5 We Watched Profiles.

Unforeseen challenges

The $76-million budget deficit UConn is currently grappling with has forced some painful cuts, including the suspension of a free tuition program for low-income students, which Katsouleas established as one of his first acts as university president.

The school’s board of trustees this year also ended four athletic programs — women's rowing, men's tennis, men's cross country and men’s swimming and diving — as a cost-savings measure. Katsouleas said there are no plans to reinstate those sports in 2021.

UConn also canceled what would have been the football program's inaugural season as an independent team, after it left the American Athletic Conference at the end of 2019.

Canceling football, along with all other athletic competitions this fall, was a temporary measure taken to quell the spread of COVID-19, Katsouleas said. That ban ended, and winter sports are currently competing.

UConn was able to reopen its campuses for the fall semester but had to take precautions that negatively impacted its revenues.

For example, in an effort to de-densify residential buildings, the university didn’t allow out-of-state students enrolled in all remote classes to live on campus.

That meant fewer students paying housing fees or signing up for dining plans.

UConn has received $20 million in federal stimulus funding, but that hasn’t made up for the school’s overall financial losses, Katsouleas said. More cuts could happen next year.

In addition to restricting on-campus housing, UConn took numerous other measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on campus, like requiring students to sign an agreement to follow social distancing guidelines and wear a mask in order to get and maintain housing.

It also implemented a campuswide quarantine in mid-November when positive cases began to spike and moved all classes to remote learning after Thanksgiving.

As of Dec. 1, UConn reported 738 positive COVID-19 cases among on- and off-campus students, out of more than 31,000 tests, for a positivity rate of about 2.4%.

More research focus

On the research front, UConn did play a role in helping study the COVID-19 virus.

UConn researchers received five rapid grants from the National Science Foundation and two from the National Institutes of Health for COVID-related or adjacent research. That includes a $200,000 NSF grant to study proteins of the virus that cause COVID-19.

And despite budget pressures, UConn still maintained a $4-million program that subsidized the higher-than-average cost of fringe benefits for faculty competing for research grants.

It’s a move aimed at making the school more competitive in winning all-important research dollars.

"We're still focused on the question of, ‘How can we double research and scholarship, bring life-transformative education to every student at scale and be an economic engine for the state of Connecticut?’ " Katsouleas said. "It was an amazing year, despite the challenges from COVID."

Check out our other 2020 5 We Watched Profiles.