Research Messenger
Vol 2, Issue 1
October 9, 2007
The University Grants Program
Four funding sources have now been integrated into a single program designed to provide internal support for scholarly and creative activities by SDSU's faculty: the University Grants Program. The sources are the Chancellor's Office, The Provost's Office, the Research Foundation, and the Adams Endowment for the Humanities. Collectively they have contributed the $426,388 that will be distributed to our faculty in December.
THE PROCESS.
Proposals are due to college Deans by Friday, Oct. 5. They should first be reviewed by the department chair for consistency with department goals, but chairs need not rate the applications.
The dean's office distributes proposals to the college research committee, whose members have until Oct. 22 to evaluate (on an absolute scale) and rank (on an ordinal scale) them. These ratings are returned to the Dean for review, which can result in simple concurrence with the committee ratings, or in suggested changes, which must be reconciled with the research committee.
College ratings are sent to the Division of Research Affairs (a division of the Office of Graduate and Research Affairs) on Oct. 26. Proposals from all nine eligible units (the seven colleges plus Imperial Valley Campus and the library) are organized and distributed to the 13 voting members of the University Grants and Lectureship Committee (UGLC). These comprise one representative from each of the nine eligible units, one graduate student, and an additional representative from each of SDSU's three largest colleges: College of Arts and Letter, College of Ssciences and Professional Studies and Fine Arts.
Members of the UGLC pay careful attention to the ratings they receive from the colleges. Their task is not to re-order college priorities (though they are not prohibited from doing so) but rather to select the most compelling proposals from across the colleges. Typically, the top 50 awards are non-controversial. The value of the UGLC is in providing a university-wide perspective in selecting among those that fall barely on one side or the other of our funding limits. This is a considerable task on which UGLC members will spend days of preparation.
The UGLC sends its recommendations to the Associate VP for Faculty Affairs (Bonnie Zimmerman) , the Director of Research Affairs (Camille Nebeker) and me on Nov. 19. Bonnie, Camille and I review the distribution of recommended proposals for rough parity across the nine units, and for budget savings that might be retrieved and combined to fund an additional few proposals. We make the announcement of awards in early December. The successful faculty have access to their funds beginning Jan. 1, and have 18 months to spend them. Last year, there were 65 awards and they averaged just under $7,000.
MYTHS.
1. It is a disadvantage to apply from a large unit. In our final review of UGLC recommendations last year, Bonnie, Camille and I discovered a small bias away from applicants from the three largest colleges. We used the savings we culled from making small reductions in many of the proposed budgets to fund five additional proposals from these colleges, bringing their success rates to about the university average. For this year, we have invited these colleges to have a second voting representative on the UGLC to offer better representation of the wide range of disciplines they encompass.
2. Grants are reserved for assistant professors; full professors need not apply. The overall success rate in last year's competition was 43 percent. Across the ranks, the rate was 46 percent for assistant professors, 43 percent for associate professors and 38 percent for full professors. Thus, there is a bias toward supporting those who are developing the scholarly credentials they need for success in the RTP process, but it is not so strong as to severely disadvantage proposals from tenured faculty.
The UGLC received 150 applications last year. We anticipate at least that number in 2007, and invite yours to be among them.
Best wishes for success.
Tom Scott