Research Messenger
Vol 2, Issue 4
December 12, 2007
The University Grant Program
The University Grants and Lectureships Committee (UGLC) has made its recommendations for grant awards to SDSU faculty for 2008. Letters will be going out this week to all applicants for funds that will be available Jan. 1, 2008 and must be used by June 30, 2009.
The purpose of this RM is to give you summary statistics on the applicants, the success rates and the distribution of awards and of funds across ranks and across colleges.
Funds available and requested
We are obliged to keep a reserve of about 5% to allow for increases in the cost of course buyouts and summer salaries in the coming year. With this small fund sequestered, we are left with $397,455 for distribution.
There were 139 applications, with a total request of $1,133,449. The available funds were sufficient to satisfy 35% of the requested amount.
Awards made
The UGLC ranked the 139 applications largely according to the priorities established in the colleges. Where there were deviations from the college rankings, they were usually due to additional input from the deans. Had we awarded the full requests of each successful applicant, we would have been able to fund 49 proposals. In an effort to stretch our funds, we imposed the following limits on the budgets of recommended proposals:
- Limit student support to $5000.
- Limit conference support to $500.
- Delete funds requested for partial summer stipends.
- Delete a summer stipend if a course release was also requested and funded.
- Limit graduate student salaries to $12/hr unless there was an unusual justification.
- Limit incentive payments to research subjects to $15/hr (the difference between the implied value of a graduate student and a research subject is not lost on us).
Distribution across faculty ranks
Among applications, 75 (54%) were from assistant professors, 35 (25%) from associate professors, 25 (18%) from professors, three (2%) from lecturers and one (1%) from SSPARs.
Among awards, 34 (62%) were to assistant, 12 (22%) associate, eight (15%) full and one (1%) SSPAR.
The success rate within each category was 45% for assistant professors, 34% for associates, 32% for professors, 0% for lecturers and 100% for the SSPAR. Therefore, there is a bias toward assistant professors, as there should be, but not one so severe that it excludes others from the competition.
Distribution across colleges
Arts and Letters faculty submitted 31 (23%) proposals, received 12 (22%) of the awards and $88,594 (22%) of the funds.
Business Administration faculty submitted 6 (5%) proposals, received 3 (5%) of the awards and $19,823 (6%) of the funds.
Education faculty submitted 10 (7%) proposals, received 5 (9%) of the awards and $41,324 (10%) of the funds.
Engineering faculty submitted 14 (10%) proposals, received 6 (11%) of the awards and $36,527 (9%) of the funds.
Health and Human Services faculty submitted 12 (9%) proposals, received 5 (9%) of the awards and $35,213 (9%) of the funds.
Imperial Valley Campus faculty submitted 5 (4%) proposals, received 2 (4%) of the awards and $9,215 (3%) of the funds.
Library faculty submitted 2 (2%) proposals, received 1 (2%) of the awards and $5,261 (2%) of the funds.
Professional Studies and Fine Arts faculty submitted 35 (26%) proposals, received 12 (22%) of the awards and $82,746 (21%) of the funds.
Sciences faculty submitted 24 (17%) proposals, received 9 (16%) of the awards, and $78,752 (20%) of the funds.
This year offered the most thoughtful reviews we have seen. The college committees generally did remarkably good work in ranking their proposals and providing justifications for those rankings. Most were willing to use the entire spectrum of ratings, offering credibility that they were providing objective evaluations upon which the UGLC members could rely.
The UGLC, chaired by Gary Grudnitski, bolstered by the addition of a second member from each of the three large colleges, provided fair and supportable recommendations, reached only after investing days in review and hours in consultation.
Camille Nebeker oversaw the process, Bonnie Zimmerman and I participated in the final decisions and Christine Cook kept all the statistics that appear above and prepared the letters that are about to be sent.
I offer congratulations to 39.6% of you and courage to 60.4% to persevere in seeking support for your scholarship and performances.
Tom