Welcome back from what I hope was a productive and enjoyable summer! As you can tell from the increased traffic and students coming to campus, the new school year is upon us.
I have visited several departmental faculty meetings this term, and hope to visit some more before we get too deep in the semester. This blog post will summarize some of the things I've said so far--and will say if I've not yet met with your department.
As most of you know now, the Research Office has been in our new offices for over a year now. We're at 2526 Hillsborough Street, near the corner with Pogue Street, and next door to the frozen yogurt shop. For those who've been at NC State a while, you'll know our location as the former location of the Sir Speedy print shop.
Frankly, we are a bit distant from the main buildings of the college, so I want to reiterate that I am available to meet with you in any convenient venue. If you'd like to meet in the research office, that's fine, but you may want me to come to your location; I am happy to do so. Or meet for coffee along the street--whatever works best for you.
Of course, the fundamental question you may have is: What can the Research Office do to help me? The simplest way to put this is that we can help you with any matter relating to seeking external resources to support your scholarship. This can mean just about anything:
- Want to apply for a Fulbright?
- Want to apply for a research grant from the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health?
- Want to apply to the National Humanities Center for a fellowship to write a book?
- Want to apply to the National Endowment for the Humanities?
- Do you have an idea for how a private foundation can support your work?
- Need a small bit of funding to get a project off the ground?
We can help with all this--and more!
Remember: Our office doesn’t exist simply to service multi-million dollar grants with large overhead! We do spend considerable time on such projects because they are inherently complicated. But we don’t measure success simply by how many dollars are raised. We measure success by how we can support the kind of scholarship that you cannot undertake with the resources you already have. Ideally, we’d like for more people to have external support of some sort, than to have relatively few people raising a lot of money.
I raise this issue because I recently received a note from a colleague indicating that he'd planned to submit a grant, but wouldn't do so with our assistance because the grant had "zero overhead." The amount of "overhead," or, as we put it, "F&A" (Facilities and Administration) is not the most important aspect of research support. Gleaning the resources you need to be an outstanding scholar is more important, regardless of the amount of the grant, or the overhead rate. It's really important to work with us because, regardless of the size of the grant or the overhead it raises, receiving a grant--even if it's given directly to you--creates some institutional obligations and commitments that we need to know about, and to help you to navigate.
We also understand that the decision to write a grant proposal is a major one. This is a significant commitment of time and effort. For junior faculty, in particular, spending a whole year writing an NEH or NSF grant may be unrealistic. We know that the funding world is very competitive, and we also know that you have the ability to compete for external support for your scholarship. More to the point, writing grant proposals and writing other forms of scholarly work are not necessarily mutually exclusive. We can share ideas about how writing grant proposals can help you sharpen your research agenda.
Here are some changes or new aspects of our work this year
- The college research page is considerably different from what it was before the college's website was redesigned. You can visit the page by going to http://chass.ncsu.edu and, along the menu bar at the top of the page, you can put your pointer on “Research and Engagement,” and then select “Research Administration” to tap in to our resources. Most of the material behind the "Research Administration" side of the site requires you to log in with your Unity ID and password.
- I’ve written a short guide on funding in the humanities and social sciences, and would very much like your feedback and suggestions. It’s easiest to go directly to it by going to http://go.ncsu.edu/chassfunding — I will continually update this guide with new information as it becomes available. And I would appreciate any feedback you would like to offer!
- We’ve folded the old SRA (Scholarship and Research Award) into the annual FRPD (Faculty Research and Professional Development) process. The SRA program didn’t allow people enough time to spend the funds they’d been awarded. The FRPD is a similar program, and allows for spending over an entire FY. The call for proposals will come in the Spring.
- We’ve started a program called the Proposal Preparation Program — PPP — to support faculty writing research proposals. This funding can fund preliminary work such as collecting pilot data, or small proof-of-concept studies, or visiting a program officer to share your ideas. To learn more, visit http://go.ncsu.edu/hss-ppp
- For international travel, if the Office of International Affairs solicits proposals for international travel funding, we will also accept your proposal at that time. We will match any funds that are provided to OIA for scholars traveling overseas, up to about $1000. We will also consider funding, based on funds that are available, partial support for those proposals that are not funded by OIA. The number of scholars we fund will be a function of available resources.
Some other things to know
- The College will be making extra efforts to see that our faculty are nominated for for high-value, high prestige awards in our disciplines. Our colleagues should be winning many of these awards because of the overall quality of the scholarship in our college. Please work with your department head to nominate deserving folks--including yourself!--for important disciplinary and transdisciplinary awards. This is an area where we can make a very positive impression on senior university leadership
- A reminder: extraordinary requests for support from my office should come from your department head on your behalf. We generally do not accept such requests directly from faculty. There’s a reason for this: we need departments to explain how a request is a priority, and how it will contribute resources in support of that request.
- Finally, consider subscribing to this blog! I post funding-related news there, but I hope to also share other information relevant to research and scholarship over the coming months.
Again, welcome back to the new school year. I hope you have a productive, stimulating, and rewarding year. As always, please call upon me and my staff at any time.
