NSF Award
2431750
As primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) expand externally funded research activities, there is often a period during which numbers of external awards received strains the existing post-award support infrastructure, leading to additional administrative burden for Principal Investigators (PIs) and creating compliance risks for the institution. Empirical evidence is needed from PUIs that have implemented specific plans to improve post-award support. The central research question addressed in this study is whether a combination of targeted initiatives supporting institutional research administration infrastructure can facilitate a rapid and effective transition of a PUI grants office from a “developing” to a “mature” phase. Specific project goals include optimizing efficiency of institutional processes to manage sponsored projects; building institutional knowledge of grants administration through the creation of resources for training and supporting PIs and administrative staff; and developing an undergraduate training program in Research Administration.<br/><br/>The University of St. Thomas (UST), a PUI in Saint Paul, MN, with an expanding portfolio of externally funded research, will create a support structure for funded PIs that will serve as a national model for other emerging research institutions (ERIs) and specifically as a resource for 17 other PUIs in Minnesota. Though the focus will be on the Minnesota cohort, the model will be scalable and applicable to PUIs/ERIs across the country. An additional benefit of the program will be initiation of a research administrator training pipeline focused on departmental research administration to help meet the current urgent need for such personnel across the country. The overarching goal is to build a research administration infrastructure that can sustain the current and anticipated future growth in externally funded research over the next 20 years at UST in a scalable manner, share resources, and serve as a case study for PUIs and other ERIs nationwide, supporting the role of these institutions in a national transformation of the research enterprise. This goal will be accomplished through three iterative project domains: (1) assessing needs, implementing solutions, and assessing effectiveness at UST; (2) sharing resources with partner institutions through the Minnesota Private College Council (MPCC) and assessing the transferability of these solutions to PUIs; and (3) sharing resources nationally through conference presentations and publications. Each objective is coupled with specific evaluation criteria that will be tested by an external evaluator, enabling an assessment of each of these activities.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
