A year ago, the faculty governing board of the 126-year-old Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Mass., on the verge of the busy summer research season on Cape Cod, gathered for an emergency meeting with a terminal purpose: to vote itself out of existence.
The independent lab, reliant on diminishing federal research grants, had been in dire financial straits for years. To save itself, its leaders proposed surrendering its autonomy to the University of Chicago—adding some salt to Chicago’s freshwater veins, as one dean put it. When the time came to vote, the lab’s scientists stood up, almost as one, in favor; the tally was 158-2. Rarely has extinction been so inspirational.
“Change is scary. Usually academics tend to be cautious and conservative,” said Jane Maienschein, a science historian at Arizona State University who watched the vote. These researchers were giving up their freedom, but they would survive. “They stood up quickly and proudly and said yes, we have to embrace change.”
For independent research institutes across the country, change is coming whether they like it or not. Since the recession, philanthropy and federal financing have sputtered, placing many of these institutes, which rely on grants to pay their staff and support their operations, on an endangered-species list. Some have failed. Some, through triage, have survived, but in diminished form. And others, like the Marine Biological Laboratory, have guaranteed their future by hooking themselves, and their desirable staff, to universities.
In a world of globalized science, many say, only the savviest or richest operations will remain autonomous. “Independent research institutes are great, but in some ways they are also a thing of the past,” said Jonathan D. Gitlin, a senior scientist and deputy director of research and programs at the biological lab.
Broken Engagement
The tension was most recently on display this summer, in affiliation talks between the University of Southern California and the Scripps Research Institute, a biomedical powerhouse in La Jolla, Calif. USC saw a staff that could bolster its work in the life sciences; Scripps saw an endowment and fund raising that could ensure its long-term survival.
But Scripps’ faculty members, unaware of the discussions until June, rebelled at the idea, citing worries about bureaucracy and a decline in prestige, along with financial terms that, they felt, undervalued their work. Scripps nixed the deal, and announced in July that its president, Michael A. Marletta, would resign.
Still, the list of affiliations has grown: Drexel University and the Academy of Natural Sciences; Temple University and the Fox Chase Cancer Center; Northeastern University and Ocean Genome Legacy; Hawaii Pacific University and the Oceanic Institute; the University of Georgia and the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.
Then there are the independent institutes that haven’t merged: Two years ago, the Boston Biomedical Research Institute shut its doors. The House Research Institute, in Los Angeles, slowly waned, its faculty divvied up between USC and UCLA, until it closed last month. The Field Museum, well known for its scientific work, has cut its research support to World War II levels.
Independent labs are loath to discuss budget problems, fearing that such talk could spark a fund-raising calamity and a downward spiral. Barring major changes in Washington, there’s more tightening to come, said Gregory M.L. Patterson, president of the Association of Independent Research Institutes.
“I’m afraid it’s still not over yet,” Mr. Patterson said.
Recovering From the Boom
A decade ago, it was boom time for independent institutes. Buoyed by drug licensing and a doubled budget at the National Institutes of Health, Scripps built a new campus in Florida. Then came the “undoubling": the erosion of NIH’s financing through Congressional cuts and inflation. Similar cuts came at the National Science Foundation. Scripps and many other institutes were unprepared for this new normal, when the goal had so recently been grow, grow, grow.
“We were a little bit greedy,” said Jonathan Chernoff, chief scientific officer at Fox Chase Cancer Center, in Philadelphia, which merged with Temple University, largely because of budget problems, in 2012. “I think everyone was.”
Few scientists have been spared these hardships, which have squeezed universities and private labs alike. But in troubled financial waters, if national universities are ocean liners, institutes are skiffs. One wrong choice made before the recession could seal their fate today.
Like Scripps, Fox Chase was expanding as the recession hit. It didn’t have the reserves to endure, Dr. Chernoff said. Its leaders worried about keeping their lucrative NIH designation as a comprehensive cancer center. Meanwhile, Temple wanted to expand its cancer research. For $84-million, it could add to its scientific prestige: There are only 40 other centers like Fox Chase, and most are already tied to universities.
“They could never have built that on their own,” Dr. Chernoff said.
Indeed, for universities, acquiring institutes has been a shortcut to academic standing. Chicago, no slouch in molecular or evolutionary biology, gained a world-class organismal-biology department at the Marine Biological Laboratory. And when Drexel merged with the Academy of Natural Sciences, the country’s oldest natural-history museum, it used the academy’s scientists to form the backbone of a new environmental-science department.
“I never thought I’d be a professor, let alone a department head at a university,” said David J. Velinsky, a longtime geochemist at the academy, who leads the new department. About a dozen of his peers joined him as tenured or tenure-track professors at Drexel.
For some, teaching has revitalized their work. At orientation, out on Barnegat Bay, several incoming freshmen at Drexel caught a sand shark. “This is the best day of my life!” one student exclaimed—not too unusual a sentiment on a college campus. But one of the scientists, a fisheries ecologist, “was blown away” that he could have such an influence, Mr. Velinsky said.
Several Fox Chase researchers balked at the idea of the merger with Temple and retired. A similar trend has played out elsewhere: The majority of researchers stay, a few move on. Whenever there’s a merger, there are bound to be culture clashes. Institutes are nimble and draw scientists used to autonomy.
“They like not sitting on the curriculum committee and the committee on parking,” said Mr. Patterson, of the research-institute association. “And now they’re pushing into an organization that’s much more rigid. Staff morale is generally an issue.”
Fox Chase had no departments, no chairs, no deans. Dr. Chernoff trusted his scientists to call their own shots. But now, as part of a large university and medical system, they have to understand that there is a structure. “You can’t just freelance all the time,” he said.
There are more-practical concerns, too. Temple’s nurses are unionized, but Fox Chase’s are not. Will that be a problem?
Future Prospects
It may be that, in this era of global competition, there are skills that only large universities can afford. Fund raising, for example, has become complex and targeted, with expensive software packages mandatory for success. Universities also have competence in grant management, human resources, and information technology that independent institutes find tough to match.
“It’s very difficult to put together a stable organization that will continue, always, to attract federal funding and continue to be of interest to foundations,” said Richard J. Roberts, a Nobel laureate and chief scientific officer at New England Biolabs, the private company that started Ocean Genome Legacy. Centers must think hard about what the government will be willing to support.
One certain focus of federal financing is multidisciplinary work, reflecting a trend throughout the sciences. Yet at some small institutes, scientists are hard-pressed to even meet researchers outside their ken: Interdisciplinary work might have been when a botanist worked with a zoologist, for example.
More exploration is possible inside universities. At Fox Chase, Dr. Chernoff likes the easy access to Temple’s pharmaceutical chemists. And at the Marine Biological Lab, the Chicago affiliation means access to computational expertise at Argonne National Lab and Fermilab.
That collaboration will be tempered by respect for tradition. They’ve always collected squid at Woods Hole, and they always will, Dr. Gitlin said. But there are other model organisms they could consider, too.
It’s been a year since the affiliation. Chicago’s president, Robert J. Zimmer, now leads the lab’s Board of Directors. The combined staff has held town-hall meetings and gone on retreats. The university is exploring how the lab can give it a foothold on the East Coast. It sent eight undergraduates to Woods Hole this summer—one in Dr. Gitlin’s tissue-engineering group—and may offer a “semester abroad” there. A degree program could come, too, though the lab has a continuing partnership with Brown University. And the lab will remain open, as always, to visiting scholars from across the world.
Many questions remain, said Ms. Maienschein, the science historian, who has longtime Woods Hole ties. What’s the business model? Will they pick a great director? “We can get a new kind of institution here,” she said.
Meanwhile, just down the shoreline, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is struggling, she said. The debate whispers across the waters: Do they give up? Do they cut back? Or is there a new direction?