John Mead, director of the Coal Research Center, has been appointed associate dean of the SIUC graduate school to assist the school in obtaining funding for research development, Mead said.

I am delighted to help advance SIUC in research activities, Mead said. I’m looking forward to assisting the faculty in identifying a wide variety of research topics.

Mead said his appointment was conceived by graduate school dean John Yopp. The appointment was announced at the first Graduate School Council meeting earlier in the semester.

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Dr. Yopp had been working to form a research development team, Mead said. He wanted to help SIUC obtain more external research funding and more success in research, Mead said.

With research funding becoming scarce, Mead said this is the time to be assertive in coming up with strategies and research topics.

One thing is certain in federal research funding there is more competition for research dollars than ever before, Mead said. There are areas where federal research dollars are going down, so now it is essential that we be aggressive. There is a lot of competition out there with all the other universities and research institutions.

Yopp said the appointment is the result of a three-year review process within the grad school.

We had a review about three years ago, Yopp said. It was recommended that we do more research development, so we started looking into the structure of the graduate school.

Yopp said Mead’s appointment does not increase the number of staff in the graduate school. As director of the Coal Research Center, Yopp said Mead was already a part of the graduate school. He said the appointment will allow for more concentration on research development in addition to the research Mead has already contributed to the coal program.

We didn’t hire any additional personnel, Yopp said. We already had John Mead in the grad school. One associate dean voluntarily went back to teaching. His appointment allows him wider responsibility in research development.

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