HAGLER FELLOWS
Recruitment
"Brilliant scholars are the foundation on which great universities build. At Texas A&M University, the Hagler Institute is the cornerstone of that foundation. The Institute brings the world's finest minds to Texas A&M to team with our outstanding faculty and students."
During its first nine years, the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study has brought eighty Hagler Fellows to Texas A&M University. The composition of the fellows mirrors that of nominees from the colleges.
Figure 1
Figure 1 shows the number of nominees from each college or school that the Institute received in its first nine years, the number of those nominees approved for recruiting, and the number of those approved who then were recruited. Each college or school’s participation in the Hagler Institute’s mission is best measured by the number of its nominations. Each college and school may submit 2.5 nominations per call for nominations (the half arising when two colleges share a nominee’s time on campus). Because the number of nominating slots is not linked to college size, that system favors smaller colleges.
Nominees must hold the equivalent of at least national academy–level stature in their discipline. Because not all fields have such academies, the Faculty Advisory Board always conducts “apples versus oranges” comparisons across disciplines. The chart, however, shows that the Institute has developed a rigorous process to evaluate nominees that does not discriminate against disciplines that lack national academies. The chart shows that most colleges, even those without national academies, such as Liberal Arts and Mays Business School, are submitting high-quality nominations as measured by the high proportion of nominees approved for recruitment. Figure 1 shows that the colleges of science and engineering have attracted the most Hagler Fellows. That outcome is a result of those colleges’ significantly greater number of nominations. Because not all colleges are the same size, the graph of actual nominations and recruits gives us a potentially misleading picture of the propensity of colleges to participate in the Institute. The four largest colleges are engineering, liberal arts, agriculture and life sciences, and science. Smaller colleges typically have fewer resources with which to pay fellows.
Figure 2: Nomimations Normalized by Size of College and Years to Nominate
Figure 2 normalizes the number of nominations by size of college, as measured by the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty and the number of years that each has been eligible to nominate. Colleges with normalized values exceeding 100 have submitted an above-average number of nominations for their size and the time they have been eligible to nominate. Colleges with values lower than 100 are nominating lower than the average given the number of faculty in that college.
Despite its many nominations, the College of Engineering is below average in its number of nominations because of its large size and the limits on nominations allowed per college. The School of Law is far above average in its nominations because of its smaller size and fewer years of eligibility to nominate, as well as its many submitted nominations. Of the large colleges, liberal arts and agriculture and life sciences are below average in their participation in the Hagler Institute.
