Research Council

Voting members present: Jana Bouwma-Gearhart, Kim Calvery, Loren Davis, Andy Houseman, Siva Kolluri, Katie Linder, Bob Mason, Carlos Ochoa, Ron Reuter (via phone), Andy Ungerer
Voting members absent: Chris Akroyd, Claudia Hase, Glenn Howe
Ex-officio members present: Research Office – Roy Haggerty

Elect Vice-Chair

Action: Bob nominated Siva Kolluri as Vice-Chair; motion seconded and approved.

• Vickie noted that the Faculty Senate Bylaws don’t allow for ‘vice’ titles, but it does allow for ‘chair’ titles. Siva’s title will be co-chair.

Revision of Incentives Programs – Roy Haggerty

• Incentive Programs Redesign v1.0
• Andy explained that Anne Nolin, Rich Holdren and the Research Council last year proposed to redesign the incentive programs because some awards were too small, and there should be a focus to encourage faculty to work together across colleges which may result in larger awards.
• Roy noted that Rich Holdren and Debbie Delmore both retired last June and, because Debbie’s position has not yet been filled, the Research Office doesn’t have the FTE to run the research programs as they’ve done in the past. The Research Office will use a portion of Debbie’s salary to put back into research.

Small Grants Program (SGP)

• Roy explained that the Research Office would like to create two new programs. Retain the SGP, but not inside the Research Office, and propose to transfer the budget ($60,000) to the Center for Humanities to manage as a grants program for the same purposes – small grants for CLA. Additionally, $10,000 would be transferred to OSU Cascades for small grants there. This proposal would move management of the SGP out of the Research Office, and the Research Council would not review those proposals.
• Discussion:
  • Concern expressed about possible underfunding of certain areas on campus.
  • The proposal creates a hole for smaller awards for STEM-type research as there is no small grant for bridge funding.
  • Concern that the Center for Humanities can adequately address requests from outside the College of Liberal Arts (e.g. College of Education or Dept. of Mathematics).
  • This is an opportunity for another entity to manage these funds.
  • It’s difficult to find external reviewers and concern expressed that the proposals can be adequately vetted without external reviewers; also a concern that the difficulty in finding external reviewers results in uneven reviews to the detriment of the process.
  • The funds must be managed either by the Research Office or another entity. The actual fund distribution is handled by the appropriate Business Center.
  • Debbie previously spent 75% of her time managing Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship & Creativity (URISC), Faculty Release Time (FRT), General Research Fund (GRF) and Research Equipment Reserve Fund (RERF) grants. Final reports for the grants were also handled by Debbie.
  • The proposal wouldn’t be more work for the Council, but could be more work for the co-chairs; administration of the funds may be problematic for the Council.
  • An alternative is to allocate funding of $5,000 to each college; this also could be problematic. The colleges would be in better shape to handle the reviews; however, different deans may have different philosophies about how funds are distributed.
    • Is there a way to manage so reviews are more inclusive? There could be a merging of ideas – a subset of the Research Council, with others, could review the proposals, and the Center for Humanities could solicit proposals, distribute funds, etc.
    • There was concern with the Center for Humanities having responsibility for grants.
    • There is a large gap between the upper end of the SGP and lower end of the large grants; this was not a concern expressed by deans.
    • Roy noted that, although an RFP solicitation needs to be made, the Research Office can delay the RFP until the Council determines how to handle the SGP.
    • A one-year pilot was suggested for the SGP proposal.
    • An alternate version of the proposal would be to change the vetting process to require that the Center for Humanities have all proposals reviewed by at least one Research Council member.
    •  Several expressed concerns related to what the Center does.
    • The volume of proposals submitted is about 20-30 for each grant for each cycle, but not all are funded.
    • Andy noted that there is a limited funding pool and asked the Research Council whether they would support giving funds directly to deans in colleges listed in the Small Grants Program (Liberal Arts, Business, Education or any faculty with a humanities, arts, or creative activity with another college).
    • The proposal would require colleges to report how the funds were distributed. There are two ways to distribute funds – equally to all colleges (some would gain and others would lose); or proportional to research funding.
    • One asked if it would be acceptable to give funding to colleges at the historical rates.

Action: This proposal will be discussed further at an upcoming meeting.

• Recap: There are concerns about the Small Grants Program being administered by the Center for Humanities; the College of Education and Mathematics may have concerns; and there are concerns related to the alternative to distribute funding to colleges due to the potential variability of distribution by deans.

Large Program Development (LPD) Grants

• The proposal is based on Research Council recommendations from last year.
•  Previously, the upper end of the LPD was $130K, but the proposal is to increase to $200K; a unit match is encouraged to keep the project cost under $100K total. The LDP proposal is to fund two proposals per year that should run for two or three years, and intended for a multi-college group to submit proposals.
  • Goals: Stimulate major, transdisciplinary, externally-funded research programs by supporting multidisciplinary teams to work together; identify new research cores at OSU; and Research to advance Strategic Plan 3.0
  • Funds could be used for any project-related expenses allowed with E&G funds.

• Alternative is to reduce the time period to have funds available for more proposals.
• Question: Is there a lot of grant collaboration within OSU, rather than across the nation? The LPD could be used for the two-college OSU portion of a collaboration with other institutions.

Following a review of the F&A Rate (below), the Incentives Programs discussion continued.

• Not all money that funds proposals are equal. Some faculty feel that those generating high dollar grants should see more of a benefit than those generating lower dollar grants.
• One Council member liked the emphasis put on higher F&A rate and didn’t feel that the proposal was unfair for Liberal Arts.
• There is review criteria for the LDP Grants, is there similar review criteria for the SGP? Criteria can be developed.
• Andy recapped: SGP concerns over who reviews, and there may be some strategies for shoring up; and concerns regarding the middle tier for those who need bridge funding because the college isn’t listed in either the SGP or LDP. Are there concerns related to the LDP other than stipulating trans-disciplinary programs?
• There is no lower limit for the LDP. Concern is that we don’t want to open up to a large number of grants; still need vetting process at the college level so the Council doesn’t have a plethora of grants to review. This shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement for federal grants, which data shows has occurred in the past.
• Are there other programs that help incentivize faculty for collaboration? There are no other programs of this nature.
• Last year the spirit of the Council was to consider grants from newer faculty.

Action: Andy requested Council members to send him bullet points of concerns. The objective is to finalize a proposal by the end of the next meeting.

Andy will send a Doodle poll for the next meeting.

F&A Rates at OSU – Roy Haggerty

• The F&A Rates at OSU handout explains what F&A is, how it’s calculated, what the numbers look like, how they compare to other institutions, and how money is distributed at OSU.                                                                       

Research Office Strategic Plan – Roy Haggerty

• Postponed

Agenda for the Year – Andy Houseman, Roy Haggerty

• Roy is hoping to have the review load reduced and spend more time on broader research issues at the university, and determine how to resolve them. He proposed that some tasks include reviewing the Research Office’s Strategic Plan and SWOTs
  • He would also like comments related to a policy handbook that is being developed by the Research Office; and
  • Review of incentive programs.
• Andy proposed one change to the review process. In the past, external reviewers could not come from the same unit, which caused problems. Is it necessary to avoid conflict of interest? Is really difficult to find qualified reviewers from some colleges? Think about this issue for discussion at the next meeting.

Minutes recorded by Vickie Nunnemaker, Faculty Senate staff