The records of the Division of Research Development and Administration (1919-1996) encompass both the DRDA and all of its predecessor organizations. The papers have been divided into seven major series: Governing and Oversight Bodies (1919-1964), Staff and Committee Records (ca. 1922-1979), Administrative Files (1922-1972), Correspondence Files (1943-1972), Willow Run Laboratories (1946-1966), Directors' Files, and several boxes of Research Grant Files on microfilm. There are also four smaller series: the Engineering College Research Council (1959-1961), Review of the DRDA - Report to Harold Shapiro, 1980, Engineering Research Institute - miscellaneous research reports, Photographs, and Programmed Research Information System at Michigan (PRISM) Reports.
Mortimer E. Cooley became the dean of the Department of Engineering in 1904 with the firm conviction that privately-sponsored research should be integrated into the College's activities. This idea was popular with neither the faculty nor private industry, and it was not until World War I that the College, through the efforts of Clifford D. Holley, acting chairman of the Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, interested the Michigan Manufacturers' Association in sponsoring research. Largely on the strength of this activity, the regents in 1919 created the new Department of Engineering Research within the College of Engineering. The department's purpose was to foster privately sponsored research. Its emphasis was on basic research, rather than routine testing and analysis.
The new department's growth was slow. Some faculty members continued to resist the department's work. Private industry proved reluctant to fund projects. Corporations were particularly concerned about a lack of patent protection for discoveries made at the university. Some work was forthcoming, however, and in 1928 a patent trust agreement was approved by the Regents, making it possible for a sponsor of research to reserve any patent rights that a project might generate.
World War II and the postwar environment fundamentally changed the nature of sponsored research and its source of funding. Prior to the war sponsored research had been almost exclusively engineering projects. During and immediately after the war, sponsored research in the physical sciences grew dramatically. Equally significant was the change in the source of funds and their increase. In 1940 the department received two dollars in private money for every one dollar in public funds. Total sponsored research then amounted to about $158,000. In the academic year 1945 sponsored research had grown to over one million dollars. Three-quarters of that sum came from public funds.
Recognizing both the broadening of sponsored research as well as the tremendous increase in funding, the Regents in 1948 reconstituted the Department of Engineering Research outside of the College of Engineering as the Engineering Research Institute (ERI). The ERI was given responsibility for fostering and overseeing non-University funded research activities in the fields of engineering and the physical sciences. As a part of this responsibility the Aeronautical Research Center, located at Willow Run Airport, was placed under the ERI's jurisdiction in 1949.
Sponsored research continued to grow at the University at phenomenal rates. By the academic year 1951 it had reached two million dollars per year. The areas of sponsored research also continued to grow. The Medical School, in particular, began to receive large grants of funds for specific projects. To cope with this continued growth in the breadth and volume of sponsored research, the Regents, in 1958, reorganized the ERI, renaming it the University of Michigan Research Institute (UMRI). While UMRI was empowered to foster as well as oversee research throughout the University, in practice the organization exercised only administrative oversight tasks. It did not choose to sponsor any projects, and operational control of projects reporting to the ERI was transferred to the various teaching departments or to the Willow Run Laboratories. The vacuum created by the decision of the UMRI not to undertake the fostering of research was also filled by the creation of the Institute of Science and Technology.
In 1959 UMRI's focus was shifted by the creation of the position of Vice President for Research. While created independently of the vice-president, UMRI quickly became the administrative office through which the Vice President for Research worked. In 1961 this de facto arrangement was formalized with the reorganization of UMRI as the Office of Research Administration (ORA). ORA served formally as the administrative arm of the Vice President for Research and bore primary responsibility for relieving sponsored project's technical staff from involvement with non-technical, procedural matters. ORA's jurisdiction covered the entire University. It employed, in 1962, over one hundred individuals.
At its formation ORA, reflecting the office's long history, was primarily research oriented. Throughout the 1960s, however, the office's mission broadened to include sponsored grants in non-research areas such as teaching. This slow but constant broadening of authority led to one more reorganization of the office in 1973. At that time, it became the Division of Research Development and Administration, retaining all of the functions given to the ORA at its creation in 1961, as well as formally adding to the office the responsibilities that it had accrued during the 1960s.
