Research Messenger
Volume IV, Issue 2
October 13, 2009
ARRA support
Results from the first sequence of funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) are now known, and the news is good.
Since April, our faculty have written, and the Research Foundation (RF) has submitted, 164 ARRA proposals, requesting some $73 million in support for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Several of the large proposals--for construction, renovation, and major equipment--are still under review, but we now have in hand 43 awards totaling $11.3 million.
Our primary benefactor, as always, is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), from which 31 awards, worth $7.8 million, have come. To put this success in perspective, SDSU faculty have won 65% ($7.8 million out of $12.0 million) of the NIH funding to the CSU. Among the 130 California institutions that received ARRA support from the NIH, SDSU ranked 11th, behind only six UCs (the five with medical schools plus Berkeley), Stanford, Scripps, USC, and Cal Tech.
The NIH's most prestigious and competitive awards were the Challenge grants (of which 700 were funded from among 21,000 applications) and the Grand Opportunities grants (success rates not yet available). We submitted 34 Challenge proposals at $1 million apiece, and won four awards (12 percent success, vs the 3 percent national mean). They were well distributed across our campus:
- Mark Sussman, College of Sciences
- Richard Hofstetter, College of Arts and Letters (CAL) and Mel Hovell, College of Health and Human Services (HHS)
- John Clapp and Susan Woodruff (HHS)
- Jim Lange (Student Health)
We submitted four Grand Opportunities proposals and Linda Gallo (Sciences) was successful with a $2.5 million award. Linda will lead a team of researchers from Northwestern, Albert Einstein, U. Miami and UNC-CH in a nationwide investigation of Hispanic health practices.
We also drew heavily on the National Science Foundation, attracting 10 grants worth $3 million. The remaining two awards came from the Department of Justice and an Arizona school district (subcontract).
By college, the breakdown was: Sciences (31), HHS (6), CAL (2), Engineering (2), Student Affairs )1), and RF staff (1).
These successes benefit more than the 37 faculty who received funding. They will provide the RF with some $2.6 million in additional facilities and administration revenue, much of which will be reinvested in SDSU to buffer us from the impact of state budget reductions, drastic as those will remain.
Examples of the benefits abound. The Chancellor deleted funding for research, scholarship and creative activities (RSCA) from the 2009-10 CSU budget, depriving SDSU of $230,000 that was the primary resource behind our University Grants Program. The RF was in a position to allocate enough resources to Provost Nancy Marlin that she could replace those funds, and the University Grant Program will proceed this year with its full complement of $430,000, integrated from four sources, all now local.
The RF is contributing to SDSU's expenses associated with research--salaries and lease payments--and has accepted a broader role in supporting SDSU's research infrastructure when deans can no longer make their normal allocations.
Our faculty, and the RF that supports them, have responded magnificently to ARRA opportunities, generating resources for all of us at a time when they are needed most. That was, of course, the intent of the federal stimulus package, one that is being fulfilled on our campus.
Thomas R. Scott
Vice President for Research
San Diego State University