Barringer Continues NSF Work

Margaret Blanchard

It’s been two years since Sondra N. Barringer joined the Institute as a postdoctoral research and teaching associate. With a background in sociology and economics, Barringer has focused her research on the relationships within and between higher education organizations, and their consequences.

In August, she embarked on a multi-year research project on interdisciplinary research within large research universities with a recently awarded NSF grant (with Co-PI Erin Leahey, University of Arizona) entitled “University Commitment to Interdisciplinary Research: Scope, Causes, and Consequences.” The project will develop the first measure of university commitment to interdisciplinary research, and assess both its precursors (e.g., environmental factors and institutional plans) and its impact on scholarly output, commercialization and university rankings.

“This project is built around the intersection of Erin’s research on how the specialization and interdisciplinary nature of scholars’ research helps or hinders their careers and my research on how relationships between and within higher education organizations affect their organizational behaviors,” Barringer explains. “Our combined expertise allows us to evaluate the extent to which universities are committing to interdisciplinary research, what factors explain different levels of commitment across universities, and how this affects university outputs.” With the help of a team of graduate and undergraduate students and preliminary research already in hand, she hopes to start writing papers within the first year of the grant.

Barringer also continues her work as project manager for the NSF-funded grant titled “The Executive Science Network: University Trustees and the Organization of University/Industry Exchanges” with Co-PIs Sheila Slaughter and Barrett Taylor. The project is focused on mapping out the ties between AAU universities, trustees and firms, and evaluating the nature and consequences of those ties for universities.

“We presented three papers from the grant at ASHE last November and are presenting some of our initial qualitative findings at the Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy in September,” she says. “These presentations allow us to get valuable feedback from colleagues as we finish the data collection and continue to write papers this year.”

One such paper, which Barringer co-authored with Slaughter, is forthcoming. “University Trustees and the Entrepreneurial University: Inner Circles, Interlocks, and Exchanges” is currently in press in Higher Education, Stratification, and Workforce Development: Competitive Advantage in Europe, the US, and Canada published by Springer.

Barringer is grateful for her time at IHE. “It’s been great to be part of such an interdisciplinary department with such a wide range of research interests,” she says. “I also enjoyed teaching classes the last two years. The students were wonderful and I continue to enjoy collaborating with a number of them on research papers.”