Measuring Institutional Capacity for Grantsmanship: Constructing a Survey Tool for Institutions to Assess Institutional Support for Faculty and Administrators to Pursue Grant Funding
Title: Measuring Institutional Capacity for Grantsmanship: Constructing a Survey Tool for Institutions to Assess Institutional Support for Faculty and Administrators to Pursue Grant Funding
Measuring the level of institutional capacity for grantsmanship within higher education informs administrators about the needs of their organization and where resources and institutional supports can be implemented to support faculty and staff. Receiving grant funding can lead to implementing cutting-edge programming and research support, which could improve the quality of education provided and, ultimately, student retention. While conducting an institutional capacity needs assessment is crucial for making data-informed decisions, there is a significant gap in institutional capacity research; specifically, there is no valid and reliable assessment tool designed to measure institutional capacity for grantsmanship. The present study aims to develop an assessment tool for higher education institutions to evaluate support systems and identify the needs of their faculty and administrators for grant writing efforts. The current study used a mixed-method approach over three phases to understand the indicators behind measuring institutional capacity for grantsmanship. We developed six reliable scales—promoting grant proposal writing, proposal writing (for faculty), proposal writing (for administrators), proposal writing (all respondents), submitting grant proposals, implementing grant activities, and managing awards. This study contributes to our understanding of institutional capacity and produced a reliable assessment tool to support grantsmanship. more »« less
Godwin, Allison; Karlin, Jennifer
(, IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))
null
(Ed.)
This Special Session will engage engineering and computing education professionals in an interactive discussion of how to find and use the expertise of an advisory board when writing and executing funded projects. Our recent research of effective practices for supporting early career faculty in engineering education has shown that grant administration is an area that many faculty feel unprepared to manage. Beyond writing an excellent grant proposal, the skills required to carry out the planned grant activities are different from those addressed in existing professional development opportunities and are essential the success of a grant. This session will provide an interactive discussion and development of tools on one specific aspect of grant proposal writing and management—advisory boards. Advisory boards are an essential part of leveraging the expertise in the wider engineering education community, but there are various ways of strategically building and engaging advisory boards in grant work. The outcomes of this session will be a set of tools for faculty to use in building and leveraging the expertise of an advisory board in grant submissions.
Cresiski, Robin H; Ugarte, Fadel; Harris, LaKeisha; Clark, Jessica K
(, Frontiers in Education)
Bankston, Adriana
(Ed.)
Biomedical faculty positions require experience as a postdoctoral scholar (or “postdoc”). However, there is a current misalignment with postdoctoral training and workforce needs within higher education. The majority of postdocs are trained to be research faculty while completing fellowships at research-intensive universities, despite the fact that the majority of US higher educational institutions (where these postdocs may be employed) focus on undergraduate education. This leads to postdoctoral scholars not having the opportunity to gain exposure to different institutional types where they could be employed. Importantly, they also lack the opportunity to build a network or receive mentorship from faculty at non-R1 institutions. This may be particularly true of underrepresented scholars. In this brief report, we describe the practice of the NSF-funded PROMISE Academy Alliance to bridge this training gap and support greater preparation for faculty careers at an array of institutional types by leveraging collaboration within a state university system. A survey of PROMISE Academy Fellows about their structured experiences engaging with other campuses (e.g., campus tours, workshops, speaking opportunities) reveals that visits to other campuses within the state system are informative and impactful, both on their research and their employment interests. The positive findings can hopefully inspire easy-to-implement changes in postdoctoral support across other university systems or regional consortia.
Pickering, Cynthia K.; Craft, Elaine L.; VanIngen-Dunn, Caroline; DeWitt, Emery; Roberts, Richard H.; Slisz, Judith
(, Research in healthcare financial management)
null
(Ed.)
HSI ATE Hub is a three-year collaborative research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that joins two successful programs. Mentor-Connect mentors 2-year college faculty to develop competitive proposals for the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program, and KickStarter facilitates strategic STEM assessment and planning to drive competitive STEM proposal development at 2-year Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The goal of HSI ATE Hub is to build capacity and leadership at 2-year HSIs for developing competitive ATE proposals to elevate 2-year HSIs as drivers of their community’s economic success via technician education. Data sets from three annual HSI ATE Hub Cohorts, four prior KickStarter Cohorts, and nine Mentor-Connect Cohorts have been aggregated to assess the following research questions about 2-year HSIs: Are there unique opportunities/barriers/challenges related to STEM program development and grant-writing endeavors for advanced technological education? How do we build capacity to pursue the opportunities and address the barriers/challenges? How do mentoring efforts/styles related to STEM program development and grant-writing need to differ for HSI faculty? What types of resources are relevant to the HSI ATE Community? This third paper in a series will report new data and incremental results from Year 3 of the HSI ATE Hub and a summary of results from the prior two years [1] [2]. These results include interactions with the HSI ATE community through intentional, expanded engagement to enhance learning from Latinx Advisory Council members and training webinars to develop educators’ acumen of culturally responsive instruction and high impact practices. Feedback from interviews and surveys with faculty at 2-year HSIs in HSI ATE Hub Cohorts 1-3 will be discussed to address research questions 1, 2, and 3. Evolved staging of resources relevant to the HSI ATE Community and related research directions for extending the project will address research question 4.
HSI ATE Hub is a three-year collaborative research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that joins two successful programs. Mentor-Connect mentors 2-year college faculty to develop competitive proposals for the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program, and KickStarter facilitates strategic STEM assessment and planning to drive competitive STEM proposal development at 2-year Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The goal of HSI ATE Hub is to build capacity and leadership at 2-year HSIs for developing competitive ATE proposals to elevate 2-year HSIs as drivers of their community’s economic success via technician education. Data sets from three annual HSI ATE Hub Cohorts, four prior KickStarter Cohorts, and nine Mentor-Connect Cohorts have been aggregated to assess the following research questions about 2-year HSIs: Are there unique opportunities/barriers/challenges related to STEM program development and grant-writing endeavors for advanced technological education? How do we build capacity to pursue the opportunities and address the barriers/challenges? How do mentoring efforts/styles related to STEM program development and grant-writing need to differ for HSI faculty? What types of resources are relevant to the HSI ATE Community? This third paper in a series will report new data and incremental results from Year 3 of the HSI ATE Hub and a summary of results from the prior two years [1] [2]. These results include interactions with the HSI ATE community through intentional, expanded engagement to enhance learning from Latinx Advisory Council members and training webinars to develop educators’ acumen of culturally responsive instruction and high impact practices. Feedback from interviews and surveys with faculty at 2-year HSIs in HSI ATE Hub Cohorts 1-3 will be discussed to address research questions 1, 2, and 3. Evolved staging of resources relevant to the HSI ATE Community and related research directions for extending the project will address research question 4.
Zhu, Qin; Clancy, Rockwell; Lee, Lisa
(, ASEE Conferences)
There is consensus that the integration of ethics into STEM curricula is critical for cultivating cultures for ethical practices in STEM research. We argue that the establishment of the Ethics and Responsible Research (ER2) program, previously known as Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM (CCE-STEM), at NSF was driven by a cultural perspective on ethics education. According to the most recent version of its solicitation, A comprehensive approach to ethical STEM not only influences individual behavior, but it also maintains and fosters an ethical, equitable and just culture within an organization or research field. Thus, investigators submitting to the program are encouraged to examine organizational and cultural factors that influence ethical and responsible research practice (NSF, 2023). Such a cultural approach to STEM ethics education is primarily essentially holistic and pragmatic. It adopts a holistic approach by recognizing that ethics education occurs within a cultural context, and that an individual's ethical conduct can be both influenced and constrained by their research or workplace contexts. Additionally, it adopts a pragmatic perspective by viewing the objective of ethics education not merely as influencing individual ethical reasoning (as is commonly anticipated in most STEM ethics initiatives) but as an endeavor to engender more systematic, institutional-level transformations in the ethical climate in which individual scientists and engineers work. Moreover, the cultivation of an ethical research/workplace culture is considered imperative for fostering sustainable ethical transformation at both the individual and organizational levels within the campus community. Based on our initial search, while there have been seven institutional transformation projects funded through NSF's CCE STEM or ER2 program, there has been a scarcity of research that systematically compares these funded projects and seeks to derive broader theoretical insights regarding the institutional transformation approach to STEM ethics education. The purpose of this paper is to offer initial insights into the lessons that can be drawn from these funded projects, with the aim of contributing to the theoretical understanding of the institutional transformation approach to STEM ethics education. In particular, this paper seeks to investigate the following research questions: (1) What motivates researchers to opt for an institutional approach over an individualistic one? (2) What theoretical frameworks do researchers employ to tackle institutional transformation? Finally, this paper will outline how our recently awarded institutional transformation grant can benefit from these results. We intend to gather data using three major methods: (1) public summaries of these projects published on NSF’s website; (2) publications listed on each project’s dedicated webpage on NSF’s website as well as additional searches in Google Scholar; and (3) news articles and related commentaries available on the internet pertaining to these projects. We anticipate that the initial findings of this study can offer valuable insights for engineering education researchers, higher education administrators, and policymakers. These insights can aid in the development and implementation of more efficient models for fostering institutional transformation of ethical STEM cultures within and beyond their campuses.
Gant, L, Velez, C, and Torres, M. Measuring Institutional Capacity for Grantsmanship: Constructing a Survey Tool for Institutions to Assess Institutional Support for Faculty and Administrators to Pursue Grant Funding. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10562301. International Journal of Research Administration .
Gant, L, Velez, C, & Torres, M. Measuring Institutional Capacity for Grantsmanship: Constructing a Survey Tool for Institutions to Assess Institutional Support for Faculty and Administrators to Pursue Grant Funding. International Journal of Research Administration, (). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10562301.
Gant, L, Velez, C, and Torres, M.
"Measuring Institutional Capacity for Grantsmanship: Constructing a Survey Tool for Institutions to Assess Institutional Support for Faculty and Administrators to Pursue Grant Funding". International Journal of Research Administration (). Country unknown/Code not available: International Journal of Research Administration. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10562301.
@article{osti_10562301,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Measuring Institutional Capacity for Grantsmanship: Constructing a Survey Tool for Institutions to Assess Institutional Support for Faculty and Administrators to Pursue Grant Funding},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10562301},
abstractNote = {Measuring the level of institutional capacity for grantsmanship within higher education informs administrators about the needs of their organization and where resources and institutional supports can be implemented to support faculty and staff. Receiving grant funding can lead to implementing cutting-edge programming and research support, which could improve the quality of education provided and, ultimately, student retention. While conducting an institutional capacity needs assessment is crucial for making data-informed decisions, there is a significant gap in institutional capacity research; specifically, there is no valid and reliable assessment tool designed to measure institutional capacity for grantsmanship. The present study aims to develop an assessment tool for higher education institutions to evaluate support systems and identify the needs of their faculty and administrators for grant writing efforts. The current study used a mixed-method approach over three phases to understand the indicators behind measuring institutional capacity for grantsmanship. We developed six reliable scales—promoting grant proposal writing, proposal writing (for faculty), proposal writing (for administrators), proposal writing (all respondents), submitting grant proposals, implementing grant activities, and managing awards. This study contributes to our understanding of institutional capacity and produced a reliable assessment tool to support grantsmanship.},
journal = {International Journal of Research Administration},
publisher = {International Journal of Research Administration},
author = {Gant, L and Velez, C and Torres, M},
}
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