Members of the Center should be appointed or elected. The reward for membership should include a mechanism to get faculty to buy-into the concept of CMR and to work towards the goals of the Center. Benefits and responsibilities of faculty participation need to be made clear. A system must be devised to give the Center credit for what it does. It needs to have some form of ownership of the efforts it initiates rather than handing them off to Departments or individuals.
Memories are short.
Return of some indirect costs to CMR might be a part of a reward structure, which should incorporate both responsibility and accountability. It should then have well-defined protocol for receiving a portion of the indirect costs. The Ohio State University is planning a large investment in upgrading faculty in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and perhaps also in Chemistry. The strategy we have suggested here for the next generation CMR is consistent with the selective investment initiatives. The most creative ideas in materials research are developed at the interfaces between traditional disciplines.