OATdb Archive - Sam Houston State University

OATdb Archive

2012 - 2013

Research And Special Programs, Associate Vice President

Goal

Increase Research Activities

Increase research activities on campus for all areas

Objective

Provide More Research Funding Information

Inform new and senior faculty of research opportunities

KPI

Distribute Funding Information To All Depts And Colleges

ORSP distributes funding opportunities alerts to all depts and colleges

Result

Distribution Of Funding Information

We provided funding opportunity alerts to all Colleges and 23 of the 29 Departments on campus. The alerts provided included requests for proposals and program announcements.

Result

Providing Access To Databases

ORSP maintained access to databases for funding opportunities by providing all faculty, students and staff the opportunity to use the Community of Scholars program COS/PIVOT and Foundation Search. Associated with this was a workshop held on how to use COS/PIVOT. Additionally, one ORSP staff member provided assistance to any users wanting to enroll and use COS/PIVOT and Foundation Search.

Action

Discovering And Disseminating Funding Opportunities

Previous activities have demonstrated that there are many funding opportunities for researchers at SHSU. The challenge is finding sources of funding opportunities and matching these opportunities with appropriate SHSU researchers. We have created a database of faculty research interests and our plan is to continue to update this resource to allow the ORSP staff to easily match grant opportunity with qualified and interested faculty. We will use the following sources to search for grant opportunities:

ORSP will subscribe to COS/PIVOT, which is an enhanced database that tracks funding opportunities.
ORSP will subscribe to a foundations database to look for opportunities not found in COS/PIVOT.
We will engage the TSUS funded governmental affairs resource, The Normandy Group, to inform us of Federal trends in grants and to alert us to upcoming Federal grant opportunities.

ORSP will designate two of its staff to help with the process of identifying funding opportunities, matching opportunities with the proper faculty, and forwarding the information to those faculty.

Goal

Increase External Funding

Increase sponsored research for all areas

Objective

Increase Number Of Faculty Pursuing Sponsored Research

Increase number of Faculty submitting grants to NSF, NIH, Dept. of Education, and other agencies

KPI

Conduct Grantwriting Workshops

Provide assistance to faculty through topic specific grantwriting workshops

Result

Grantwriting Workshops

We held three workshops during Fall Semester and three during Spring Semester.

Action

Grant Writing Assistance

The number of workshops offered by ORSP has remained relatively constant for the past few years however during the past year there has been a decrease in attendance for these workshops. In feedback from the SHSU faculty we find that most faculty who want to attend these workshops have done so. To continue our effort to increase external funding, our action will be to change tactics in facilitating grant writing by SHSU faculty. We will again offer a basic grant writing workshop for new faculty who have not yet had the opportunity to attend a workshop but we will not offer additional workshops as we have in the past. In place of these workshops ORSP will offer assistance to potential grant writers on an individual basis. ORSP has designated one staff person to have this as their work assignment. We tested this idea in the past year where ORSP staff helped write two proposals. Both were funded. The ORSP action plan is to increase this activity of aiding and possibly participating in writing grant proposals.

Goal

Increase Scholarly Activities

Increase creative and scholarly achievements

Objective

Assist Faculty To Develop More Scholarly Activities

Support faculty with scholarly endeavors

KPI

Assist Faculty Achieve More Scholarly Activities

Sponsor travel and/or activities related to scholarly achievement

Result

Assistance For Scholarly Activities

Through internal grants and other financial assistance, ORSP directly gave financial support to 32 researchers. Results of some of these projects can be found in bound copies of internal grants maintained at ORSP and the Newton Gresham Library.

Action

Support Of Scholarly Activities

ORSP will manage an internal grant program that will fund approximately ten researchers at a level of $15,000 funding for a year and ten researchers at a level of $5,000 for summer research projects. ORSP will also strategically use limited funds to support up to six faculty members in their effort to acquire external funding for their research.

Goal

Increase Research Opportunities For Students

Increase students' knowledge through more research opportunities

Objective

Assist Faculty Identify Research Opportunities Involving Students

Identify sponsored research programs aimed at exposing students to research

KPI

Identify Research Opportunities For Students

Identify grants that sponsor research projects involving students

Result

Undergraduate Research Support

While trying to identify opportunities for funding undergraduate research, we determined that the best mechanism was to develop an undergraduate research center at SHSU. To begin this process, we sent an ORSP staff to a meeting of the Council for Undergraduate Research. Upon returning from that conference ORSP helped organize a faculty committee to begin the process of developing a SHSU Center for Undergraduate Research. The committee produced a plan that was presented to the Provost to develop the center, which is scheduled to start in the next fiscal year. Additionally ORSP provided funding to run a pilot internal grant program to support undergraduate research teams. The committee received 43 applications for undergraduate research projects and ultimately was able to fund three of these teams with summer research money.

Action

Funding For Undergraduate Research

ORSP will continue to support research activities for undergraduates. With the University’s establishment of a center for undergraduate research, ORSP will support that program in two ways. First, ORSP will contribute funding for undergraduate research teams. Second, ORSP will work with the new director to find external funding opportunities to support the new center. ORSP will also forward any grant opportunities for funding research experiences for undergraduates to appropriate faculty members.

Update to previous cycle's plan for continuous improvement

We provided 23 of 29 Departments with funding opportunities in the last year. This was the same as the previous year which did not meet our goal of an increase. However we did provide updated databases and encouraged many faculty to conduct their own searches to identify funding opportunities. The advantage of having faculty do their own searches is that they are immediately able to evaluate whether the opportunities are a fit for their research program, making this type of search potentially more effective. Thus, we feel that we ultimately engaged an increased number of faculty even though ORSP staff did not directly forward an increased number of opportunities.

Grant writing workshops were provided but their sparse attendance demonstrated that it was time for a change in our tactics. This change is reflected in our action plan for the coming year.

ORSP has continued to directly sponsor faculty endeavors in research by overseeing an internal grants program and supporting promising faculty to seek grant funding. The internal grants program is serving as a source for “seed grants” to begin research and get preliminary results to allow researchers to be competitive for external funding. Our direct support of faculty has allowed for a small number of faculty who we thought were close to attaining funding to pursue those opportunities.

With the help of ORSP, the university is opening a center for undergraduate research. This program should greatly enhance our goal to increase research opportunities for undergraduate research. Our funding of pilot projects on undergraduate research provided evidence that there is a need for this endeavor and that it can be successful at SHSU.

Plan for continuous improvement ORSP will maintain databases of funding opportunities from foundations, Federal agencies, State agencies, and private sources. ORSP will monitor these databases and send opportunities to faculty members whose profile matches those grant opportunities. We will also train faculty to use these databases and make the resources directly available to them. Two ORSP staff will be dedicated to helping match funding opportunities with researchers.

ORSP will conduct a grant writing workshop for new faculty and allow any existing faculty to also attend if desired. We will provide help to faculty in organizing grant submissions by assisting with the budgeting and in some cases the writing of the grant.

ORSP will manage an internal grant program to fund 20 SHSU researchers in projects that can be used to begin a research activity and generate preliminary data that could be used for seeking external funding. We will also provide funding for a select group of faculty who are determined to be close to getting external funding with the hope that our support will help insure their success.

ORSP will support the new undergraduate research program at SHSU by providing funding for undergraduate research teams and giving help to identify sources of funding to support the new center.