A Growing College Rivalry: The Fight for Faculty Stars

Other times, it's just serendipity.

That's what led to the recent move by renowned genome scientist and microbiologist Claire Fraser-Liggett to head a new research institute at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Fraser-Liggett said she had been thinking about leaving her job as president and director of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, where she helped pioneer the field of comparative genomics.

Her husband, Stephen Liggett, a professor at Maryland's medical school, mentioned to a colleague that his wife wanted a new challenge. In no time, negotiations were started, and Fraser-Liggett made the move with a team of scientists that instantly elevated the school to a world-class player in the field of genomic research.

That was a big win for the University of Maryland. But, like all schools, it has recently been on both sides of the win-loss equation.

Out: Prominent nanotechnology scientist Hamid Ghandehari, to the University of Utah.

In: Mandeep R. Mehra, a nationally recognized cardiologist, to the University of Maryland in 2005 from Louisiana. He joined leading cardiologist Bartley P. Griffith, head of cardiac surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who had been wooed from the University of Pittsburgh a few years before. "In the dead of night, we went to Pittsburgh and stole him and his entire department," said one Maryland official who declined to be identified because his characterization of the incident would not be appreciated by his superiors.

The country's wealthiest private schools and most prestigious public schools have an advantage in the faculty sweepstakes because they have more to offer: money, housing, big offices, fancy laboratories. To compete, some schools, such as the University of Oregon, have started offering salary incentives.

But salary is only part of the equation: A promise of time off to develop grants, seed money for research, or new laboratories and offices are sometimes part of the deal. Some moves are sealed with a job for a faculty spouse.

The promise of better working conditions and an easier time obtaining research money is what lured Smith from the University of Arizona to GMU in 2001, he said.

Nobel Prize winner James M. Buchanan, an economist who pioneered public choice theory, already graced GMU's economics department, and Smith, whose work in experimental economics is considered revolutionary, was brought in to further burnish GMU's reputation.

Daniele Struppa, then a GMU dean, made an offer to Smith and his economic research team and they went.

"It's about where we can do our best work," Smith said. "That's what's important to our group."

So when Struppa, now chancellor of Chapman University in Orange, Calif., called Smith last year, a new deal was made.

Ward said Smith's departure was "a major loss" for GMU. Although one can practically trip over Nobel laureates at some schools, it was unusual for GMU to have two at the same time. (Buchanan has since retired.)

GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch said the school was sorry to see Smith go but emphasized that the economist still has a connection to the school: He retains the title of professor emeritus. And, Walsch said, the success of the school's basketball team in 2005-06 -- reaching the Final Four -- probably had more impact on student interest than Smith's presence.