Given that, and given that there was a decade between Texas A&M/Stony Brook invites and the relatively recent Georgia Tech/Boston U. invites, is it even realistic to think that UConn might be invited in the next decade? A lot of our plans are announced, but not yet in action.
How strong is our case?
UConn is far from the level of grants that will get them noticed. They need to hit big on the new investments and hires. On the other hand, those new professors can land those grants fairly quickly (i.e. those hired for next year can land grants the following year). The problem is that research money is dwindling. Someone should call BU and ask how they did it while everyone else was going backward. I know a couple institutions including my own that are pushing for 40% increases, which makes me imagine that every single school out there is doing the same.
Many faculty around the country would probably think that being in the northeast is attractive, even at Storrs, so UConn has a natural drawing card. My sense of UConn among faculty I know is that it is a place people would like to be, the same way that Temple for instance attracts lots of good faculty simply because it's in Philly. Faculty in the northeast like to travel to urban centers often, so places like Storrs, Amherst, Albany, Buffalo (i.e. near Toronto) are quite attractive.
I've been in meetings in which AAU membership was discussed and 99% of the meeting was geared to looking at the benchmarks in terms of research dollars. That's basically it. Because the AAU is a lobbying entity, and there's really nothing they can do for you other than the fact that you're a member of an elite group. That in itself might tip some research grants into the hands of faculty.
If you're talking about Malloy's new plans, I don't think those are going to matter as much. The hopes for UConn and the AAU come from Herbst's hiring plans and the rise in tuition that will pay for them. U. Albany, for instance, laid out a couple billion, and created public private partnerships that have returned an investment of $14 billion to the area (chip fabrication, nanotech, bioinformatics, etc.). But private industry generated by such investments (which is what Malloy is really thinking about) do not count toward the AAU. U. Albany generated $14 billion in research investment. It's not in the AAU.