Research Committee Minutes


Call To Order:	Caroline Guardino called to order at 10:30 a.m.

Members Present:	Caroline Guardino, Laura Heffernan, Tammie Johnson, Alexandra Schonning, Stephanie Weiss

Members Absent:	Wanda Hedrick, Paul Mason

Approval of Minutes:
Approved via email

II.

Introductory Remarks/Old Business

Academic Affairs funded the first 24 proposal, 42% of submitted proposals
46% were faculty in their 1st and 2nd year
5 Faculty members requested feedback
1 has requested detailed feedback:

“Can you please send me any or all of the following items of information from the latest round of summer research grant applications.

~~comments/feedback on my own application~~ (Done)

Number of applications from assistant, associate, and full professors (no names, obviously) number of grant recipients from assistant, associate, and full professor ranks (Marianne is getting this information for him.)

I am curious about the breakdown of applicants and awardees b/c it's becoming clearer to me that the process might be overly slanted toward junior faculty--if so, it's probably a waste of time for established scholars to apply.”

Official response to the inquiry:
Please be assured that our committee fairly evaluated all applications, regardless of rank. We did give value, as noted in the application under “evaluation criteria” to those applicants that made it clear they were starting “new” lines of research and/or were junior faculty. Faculty were not penalized for having sustained productivity. However, we looked closely at the applicant’s description of how the UNF grant funds would advance the current project. We also, with the help of Marianne, made sure that those applicants, who had been funded previously, completed their final grant summary.

The committee is in the process of creating a reviewers rubric so applicants can have explicit guidelines of how the committee ranks, from 1-5, each evaluation criteria
(pages 3 and 4 of the RFP).

We are also working on a way to highlight faculty research for those who are funded.
By doing so, we believe that those applying for funding will have a clearer picture of what projects are funded, as well as make contacts with faculty who could possibly do
a “friendly review” of the application before it is submitted.

Rank	Applied	Recommended by Committee	Funded
Full	9	4 (44%)	1 (11%)
Associate	14	2 (14%)	1 (7%)
Assistant	36	24 (67%)	22* (61%)

*46% of the applicants were assistant’s in their 1^st or 2^nd year.

III.

New Business/Agenda Items/Information Reports

Caroline will meet with Imeh Ebong next week about a research week this spring. She will provide information to the group at the next meeting.

Topics to bring forward: the final summaries from grant recipients could be collected into a simple publication to showcase. Maybe also a poster session? This could be a recommendation for this year’s recipients but a requirement going forward. Tammie suggests research week be held in Fall, possibly September, so that potential applicants can see what colleagues have done.

Final funding report given to the committee members
Attached

Do we want to work on a rubric (so applicants can see how they will be scored) for the scoring system for consistency amongst reviewers? Yes. Caro has document and will email it to the committee. Alex suggests weighting of a few items that are deemed most important. We will continue working on this in the February & March meetings.

Items that need close evaluations are:

ITEM 2: Is the applicant a junior faculty?

ITEM 9: “In those projects that lack external funding, is there a potential to attract future external funding..”

ITEM 10: “For those projects that already have external funding; the applicant explains why an additional summer grant is critical to the advancement of this project.”

IV.

Other Discussions and Announcements

Future meetings –

February 6^th 10:30am finish rubric
March 6^th 10:30am weighting
April 3^rd, 10:30am

Adjournment & Next Meeting

Meeting adjourned at 11:35 a.m.

Submitted by Stephanie Weiss on January 15, 2013