[Okgrantsmanship] Faculty grant submission incentive programs - Northwestern, University of South Alabama, Ball State

[Mason, Linda]

This is an example of use of a faculty incentive for grant proposal seeking at the University of South Alabama.  This is a follow-up from the Faculty Incentives and Barriers Subcommittee of the OSRHE Grantsmanship Advisory Committee.  

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA 

Using money from a rather unique internal resource (the Patent Fund), we were able to offer PIs submitting federal proposals with $50,000 or more in direct costs $1000 just for submitting. (CoPIs received $500).  If the proposal was funded, there was an additional $2000 PI/CoPI bonus.

 

The results were as follows: in the year prior to the program, 184 proposals were submitted. In the year of the program, 385 were submitted; 250 were VPIP proposals (that's a 109.2% increase with 64.9% being VPIP).  In terms of dollars, in the year prior to the program, we had (rounding) $24 million in awards. In the year following, we had $47 million (rounding); $42 million came from VPIP grants. So, in dollars, we had a 96.5% increase in funds; 90.2% were VPIP awards.  The expenditures for faculty incentives totaled at $441,000. The front-end incentive totals were $335,500; the back-end post-award incentive totals were $105,500.

 

This data was taken in November of 2010. Given the success of the VPIP's "test year," USA's Vice President for Research, Dr. Russ Lea, decided to re-implement the program effective April 2011. 

 

One more note on faculty eligibility...proposals had to be peer-reviewed and signed off on by the departmental dean or chair. 

 

Amy Brown

Grants Development Specialist II

Office of Sponsored Programs

University of South Alabama

Mobile, AL 36688

www.southalabama.edu/osp

(251) 460-6456

 

 

Another example of a faculty incentive program, like the University of South Alabama VPIP program, dramatically increasing grant funding at a school with a smaller-size research program (Ball State), from Technology Transfer Tactics (an academic tech transfer e-mag): http://www.technologytransfertactics.com/content/2011/06/29/faculty-incentive-program-leads-to-growth-in-external-funding/

 

Jacob E. Levin Ph.D.

Assistant Vice Chancellor - Research Development

Director of Research Development for the Natural Sciences

160G Aldrich Hall

University of California, Irvine

Irvine, CA 92697-3174

phone 949 824 0126 <tel:949%20824%200126> 

Fax 949 824 0127 <tel:949%20824%200127> 

email jlevin at uci.edu

 



 

Faculty incentive program leads to growth in external funding <http://www.technologytransfertactics.com/content/2011/06/29/faculty-incentive-program-leads-to-growth-in-external-funding/> 

 

An internal marketing program comprised of a series of tiered incentives to encourage faculty to increase grant proposals has resulted in a record level of external funding for Ball State University. By the end of this year, the school expects its external funding to have nearly tripled in just three years, from $18.3 million in 2008 to $45.2 million, reports Robert Morris, PhD, associate provost for research and dean of the graduate school.

Morris, who previously served as chairman of the chemistry department, has only held his current position for a few years, but he assumed the role during a time of financial challenge for many universities. “Like every other state institution, the state support for the budget keeps coming down,” he notes. “Plus, we have really grown in our scholarly intensity in the last half dozen years or so; when you do that, you start to attract better and better faculty and they are pretty aggressive. They have a lot more connections and ideas, so it’s a self-feeding system. The better you do, the better the people you can attract, and it keeps rolling.”

What made him decide to employ incentives to encourage faculty grant proposals? “In my job, I have responsibility for all of our research efforts, as well as external funding — and the graduate programs,” he explains. “When you look at that job, one of the easy things to do, if you are so inclined, is to look at only the big opportunities. But a much better approach is to … make it so your whole team is incentivized and try to build a good infrastructure; you try to raise everybody’s boat.”

Morris notes that there will still be certain people who know where the opportunities are – and you still will find opportunities on your own and relay them to faculty – but you can have a greater impact on whether they pursue them or not. “We wanted to bring up the culture of the university, and the overall enthusiasm to get people excited about going for the external stuff and finding ways to reward them,” he explains. “If you want to have more proposals published then you need to have more submitted.”


Three separate programs


Morris has established three different incentive programs, each targeting different levels of grant funding. The first, most basic program, is called the SUBMIT program. It places funds into an account for “extramural-related” expenses of project directors and co-directors. Notices of available funds are processed monthly based on the previous month’s submissions. “As people write $5,000 grants or larger, the money is funneled into a research finance account,” notes Morris. “It sounds simple, but it works like a charm — our number of initial proposals is up 25%-30%.”

The second program, called RESUBMIT, is designed to encourage faculty to keep writing larger grant proposals. “Here, people getting $100,000 or $200,000 is considered a decent sized grant,” Morris notes. “When you write something that large it’s almost always to a federal agency, and one of the rubrics is that you have to submit the proposal two or three times before you get it to hit. So, I asked if we had a mechanism to encourage people to re-submit their proposals — and we didn’t have any.”

The RESUBMIT program funds up to $2,500 to support activities leading to a stronger resubmitted proposal. Those eligible for the program are faculty members who have recently been denied an external grant proposal of at least $100,000, with a strong possibility of funding if resubmitted to the same agency. Under special circumstances, the Sponsored Programs Office will consider proposals of less than $100,000. The funds are expected to be combined with appropriate support from department heads and deans to create a plan for revision that meets the next reasonable deadline, and expenses that directly impact the development of an improved resubmission will be considered, such as summer stipend, travel, and student assistantships.

“Once somebody submits a federal grant proposal and gets a review back, it usually does not take much to paint a picture of what you need to do before you can re-submit it, such as providing more data,” notes Morris. “Our office and the P.I. will work together and see what’s needed to be most competitive the next time around.”

The third program, The Cardinal Fellows Program, offers support to investigators intent on seeking federal funding at the level of $200,000 or more in modified total direct costs — that is, the total direct costs minus equipment, tuition, and sub-award amounts over $25,000.

The award includes:

·         One course buyout, supported by the Associate Provost for Research; funds must be used for release time (supplemental compensation is not allowed). 

·         Following submission of the proposal, 1.5 times the amount of SUBMIT funds will be placed into the PI’s Research Incentive Account for use by the Cardinal Fellow for extramural-related expenses. Proposals may include co-investigators, but proposals developed under the Cardinal Fellows Program may be awarded only one buy-out. 

·         Should the proposal not be funded, a resubmission is strongly encouraged under the RESUBMIT Program policy.

“People need time for these proposals,” says Morris. “They may need a course release in the fall or spring to pull it off.”

As for the overall three-part incentive program, “It’s working,” he asserts. “You just have to let these programs do their job.”

 





 

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