Research Dean’s Corner -Dr. Sue Bloomfield
Catapult seed grant program winners: Congratulations to the 9 teams (listed below) funded in this second year of the Catapult program! We had a record 24 applications, so the competition was stiff. I deeply appreciate the time and effort invested by members of the Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) and our College CPI in reviewing; every proposal received three independent reviews. Many of these proposals involved faculty across 3 or more departments, bringing unique expertise to bear on the important objectives of each project. Outcomes include significant outreach activities in our schools as well as proposals to federal agencies utilizing critical pilot data generated with Catapult funding.
Catapult 2017 Awards- the Lead PI and funded project
Mack Burke
Improving Quality of Life through a Culturally Responsive Lens: Developing Social-Emotional and Behavioral Supports for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students At-Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
Beverly Irby
Project STAR (Service, Teaching, and Research)
Li-Jen Kuo
Learning to Write in a Digital Age: Technology-Enhanced Intervention for Young At-Risk Writers
Cindy Lieben, HLKN
Linking Metabolic Phenotype to Mood and Neurocognitive Functions in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Yolanda Padron, EPSY
Investigating Teachers’ Quality of School Life in Schools Serving Predominantly English Language Learners (ELLs)
Sara Raven, TLAC
The CREST Project: Community Research through Engagement in STEM Teaching
Miranda Walichowski, EPSY
Instructional Coaching & Leadership Endorsement Program
Matthew Walker, HLKN
Sport-For-Development (S4D) in the Developing World
Steven Woltering, EPSY
Improving Literacy Treatment through Biometric Technology
New hires in our office: It has become clear over the last several months that the current volume of post-award work generated by externally funded grants and contracts merits more staff in our office, so we are in the process of posting with HR for one more Business Coordinator II position. Providing timely and accurate responses to PI’s managing current projects is critically important and requires tight coordination with the post-award staff at SRS (see next topic). Do not hesitate to alert me or Mr. Clayton Holle (cholle@tamu.edu) if you are encountering issues in handling your project payrolls or budgets.
Prioritizing expansion of our post-award staff means that, for now, we must put on hold the hiring of a full-time grant specialist. The good news here is that our two pre-award staff, Dr. Sharmila Pathikonda and Mr. Jesús Palomo, have already started to provide high-level feedback on proposal texts upon request and are happy to do more of this. Several PI’s have sent me comments indicating how helpful this feedback from Sharmila or Jesús was in polishing off their proposal text, as well as in completing a “quality check” for all required elements listed by the funding agency. In addition, Sharmila and Jesús are happy to search for funding sources for your brilliant project ideas. They can do this best if you send an outline of your proposed objectives/specific aims with a short rationale and some keywords. They can be reached at cehdpreaward@tamu.edu
SRS updates: Some HLKN accounts have been moved at SRS from Christine Orozco’s plate to that of Cody Ballard or Joanie Birdwell, which should improve Ms. Orozco’s response time to the rest of our College PI’s whose accounts she still manages. HLKN PI’s should see the assigned administrators in the Post Award section of this newsletter to confirm who at SRS is now handling their accounts. Kristi Billinger, SRS Director, has announced the generation of a new Awards Set-up Team at SRS that will focus exclusively on that one task, starting sometime in December. This is good news, as slow award set-up creates lots of extra paperwork on interim funding of a project and payroll action snarls.
Our Pre-Proposal Form: what’s the advantage to you? I aim here to persuade you that it’s a worthwhile investment of 10-15 minutes to fill out the CEHD pre-proposal form as you are working on your next grant proposal. Reasons: 1) You will increase success of your funded project and make your department head happy, since he/she will have an early “heads up” on your plans, better enabling your DH to assist with cost-share commitments, unusual resources or required office space. 2) You will receive within 24 hours an email offering assistance with your budget preparation from Sharmila or Jesús of our office. If you prefer to handle the budget yourself, no problem. Do consider that their pro-active work on your budget can free up your time to work on the proposal narrative; they are particularly skilled at the more complex budgets, e.g, if you have one or more sub-contracts to organize. 3) If you complete a pre-proposal form at least 3 weeks before the agency’s submission deadline, you will receive a $20 gift card to Blue Baker (one gift card/PI, up to the first 50 PI’s this fiscal year). What’s not to like?
Incredibly, Thanksgiving is upon us in a few days. Enjoy this wonderful pause in our work year; I wish for everyone some quality time with family and/or friends this week and over the coming holidays.
Pre Award Updates
There are two databases for funding opportunities. Below are both options, COS (Community of Science) -Pivot is the most comprehensive one we have; the Foundation Directory is focused solely on smaller or private foundation grants.
You will have to develop a profile for both. As always, we are here to help and assist in any way we can!
Pivot
Pivot includes COS Funding Opportunities and COS Expertise. It gives institutions the edge to bring together the right research opportunities, funding, and people quickly and easily. It provides global and local connections that strengthen research by exploring new avenues for funding and collaboration for faculty, staff researchers, and graduate students.
Alternate titles: COS Funding Opportunities; COS Expertise
Foundation Directory Online
Foundation Directory Online is the nation’s leading online funding research tool, developed by the Foundation Center, a national nonprofit service organization founded over 50 years ago to help open U.S. foundations to public view. Over the past half-century we have evolved from one small library into philanthropy’s information hub.
Alternate titles: FDOP; Foundation Center
Post Award Updates
Personnel Action Forms
In December, be on the look out for two new forms. The CERD post award office has created these to be used for PI, GAR, and other research personnel payroll actions. The Personnel Action Form will be used for all mid-cycle/mid-semester actions including new hires, term/funding changes, and terminations. The Personnel Action Summary will be used when multiple actions are needed, such as when new funding is received, at the beginning of a new semester, or fiscal year. We will be providing those to faculty shortly and also posting those on our website in December.
New HLKN Project Administrator at SRS
Due to the level of research funding generated by our college, SRS will be adding an additional project administrator, Cody Ballard, to assist with the management of sponsored projects. Cody’s contact information is listed below:
Cody Ballard
cballard@tamu.edu
979.862.8465
srs.tamu.edu
Cody will handle most research projects for HLKN beginning 11/14/16. There will be some projects that Christine Orozco and Joanie Birdwell will continue to handle.
Below are the assigned administrators:
Cody Ballard-Administrator cballard@tamu.edu
CROUSE, STEPHEN
WIGFALL, LISA
GILREATH, TAMIKA
BLOOMFIELD, SUSAN
DEUTZ, NICOLAAS
MARTIN, STEVEN
MCBRIDE, RON
WALKER, MATTHEW
WILSON, KELLY
HARVEY, IDETHIA
MARTIN, STEVEN
CLARK, HEATHER
ENGELEN, MARIELLE
LAWLER, JOHN
KREIDER, RICHARD
Christine Orozco-Administrator corozco@tamu.edu
GARNEY, WHITNEY
LIGHTFOOT, JOHN
CHEN, LEI-SHIH
Joanie Birdwell-Administrator jbirdwell@tamu.edu
DEUTZ, NICOLAAS (Clinical Trials)
FOR PI’S HIRING RESEARCH STAFF THIS MONTH
**IMPORTANT**
Due to System-mandated changes in job titles plus federal-mandated changes with the new FLSA regulations, all of which must be in place by December 1, we have been informed that processing of all new position hires will be slow over the next 4-6 weeks at Human Resources (HR). Hence, it may be difficult to get any new hires completed before early January with the holiday interruptions added in. One good option if you are hiring “faculty-equivalent” research staff ( PhD required for eligibility): you can file this Research Position Posting Request form (link below) with the VPR Office to get this sort of position posted and likely more quickly than if you routed it through HR over the next month. For questions, contact Dr. Sue Bloomfield or Ms. Carol Holmes (c-holmes@tamu.edu) in the Dean’s Office.
http://vpr.tamu.edu/business-services/staffing/RPPR.pdf/view
CPI Updates from Chair Dr. Jennifer B. Ganz
During the Fall semester, we have been working closely with the Dean and research office regarding the 3-year limit on salary savings and IDC. Great news on that front – the Dean and others in the Dean’s office have reviewed the situation across the departments and this policy will not be implemented for those PIs with less than $20K, at this time. The department heads will be working with PIs who hold $20K+ to develop a plan to spend the funds and the Dean asks that we all remain cognizant of the need to keep these balances low. CPI will request input from the PIs and department business administrators at our next meeting.
Meetings will be held in 211 Heaton. All college PIs are welcome to attend.Our next meeting will be in February – to be scheduled soon!
