Members of the University of South Florida’s history department are finding new ways to get their jobs done after budget cuts

One of the presentations listed on Julie Langford’s CV serves as a vivid example of how faculty members have adjusted to years of financial austerity.

Ms. Langford is an associate professor of ancient Roman history at the University of South Florida. At an academic conference in 2012, she gave a presentation called "The Other Side of the Coin: Undergraduate Research in Lean Times." She described how students helped her build a database of Roman provincial coins; how she overcame her own reservations about what seemed like an unlikely research partnership; and how she got $30,000 of institutional money to pay for it, even as budget cuts loomed at her university.

The effects of the cuts remain, and so does her passion for research with students. Now more than ever, Ms. Langford says, it’s crucial for faculty members to embrace career-advancing work that universities can also point to as being beneficial to students.

"People are beginning to understand the power of undergraduate researchers, not just for undergraduates who get to be engaged in important work, but for faculty," she says. In her case, she adds, the research helped her earn tenure at South Florida.

Since 2008, Florida lawmakers have stripped more than $120 million from the university’s budget, forcing the nearly two dozen faculty members in the history department to find new ways to get their jobs done.