Academic Grants & Sponsored Research
Newsletter
March 16 , 2009
Volume 1, Number 1
In This Issue
Reports
FY08
FY07
FY06
FY05
Using Our New Website
Our website serves as a One-Stop-Shop for all grant information from start to finish.
Search for funding opportunities using any of our easy-to-use tools.
Coming Soon: With our new electronic Policy and Procedure Manual, it is easier than ever to maneuver through need-to-know information.
The proposal guide is a great resource for first-time or experienced proposal writers.
Hot Links
Learn who’s who in the Office of Academic Grants and Sponsored Research
Interested in attending one of our workshops? Registration is now available through our website.
This useful tool guides the prospective Principal Investigator (PI) through the major steps in preparing and submitting a proposal to an external sponsor.
Contact Us
Academic Grants & Sponsored Research
P) 609.771.3255
F) 609.637.5171
Is TCNJ Ready for the Challenges Ahead?
Can we find in the recent distressing financial news the opportunities that can benefit our institution and everything we have all been striving to achieve? Those of us in the Office of Academic Grants and Sponsored Research (OAGSR) are eager to work with all of you to meet our challenges. We strongly encourage, support, and applaud efforts to secure external resources for College programs and projects. We also provide guidance in the proposal submission process, as well as for the institutional approval required to request or receive external support.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA or Stimulus Act) contains large increases in federal support for research, education, job development, infrastructure, and many other areas that are important to The College of New Jersey. Of the $787 billion in funding provided under the ARRA, $21.5 billion is reserved for federal research and development, funds that must be allocated within the next two years or less. Information about the details of the funding is emerging daily from the various federal agencies charged with distributing and monitoring the funds.
Ellie Fogarty and Director of External Relations Stacy Schuster are taking the lead in sifting through, analyzing, and summarizing all of the information about ARRA as it relates to the TCNJ community. OAGSR will be disseminating these summaries and analyses, along with updates, program announcements, and other pertinent ARRA information, as appropriate, to individuals, interest groups, departments, schools, and campus-wide.
In addition to maximizing our public funding opportunities, and in keeping with TCNJ’s “focus on diversifying revenue streams “ as described in President Gitenstein’s March 13, 2009 letter to the TCNJ community, the OAGSR also continues to expand our relationships with corporate and foundation partners. We encourage all of you to contact us at any time to talk about finding financial support for your programs and projects, and to regularly check some of the basic sources of information about the ARRA. Primary sites already set up include the following:
General information
http://www.recovery.gov/
(Includes a link to the full text of the legislation, P.L. 111-5, previously known as H.R. 1.)
AAAS Overview
Summary of research and development funding in the stimulus package, prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/stim09c.htm
Links to every agency’s Recovery Act website
http://www.grants.gov/applicants/recovery.jsp
Latest Recovery Act grant announcements
Go to http://www.grants.gov , then click on “Recovery Act Opportunities.”
2008 Grants in Review
Perhaps even more so in difficult times, it is critical to keep an eye on our successes. We hope you will join us in celebrating the external grants awarded and proposals submitted by our faculty and staff over the last few years. In this newsletter, we have listed reports from fiscal years 2005 – 2008. You will see from the Four-Year Summary Report that we have made significant progress in increasing the amount of external support for College programs and research during this period. Some highlights include:
- The total amounts for grant awards made to TCNJ increased from $4,003,311 in FY05 to $5,219,078 in FY08
- In FY06, FY07, and FY08 over 50% (generally considered the standard for success) of all faculty and staff proposals submitted (not including those submitted from Interdisciplinary Centers) were successfully funded.
- The work of both the interdisciplinary and school-based Centers on campus has greatly enriched and expanded the College mission, and collectively brought an average of $2.5M per year to the College. These Centers are: Bonner Center for Civic and Community Engagement, Center for Assistive Technology and Inclusive Education Studies (CATIES), Municipal Land Use Center (MLUC), the Center for Excellence in Science, Technology, and Engineering, and Mathematics Education (STEM)), Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
If you have submitted a proposal or received external funding, please accept our hearty congratulations for your accomplishment! If you have not yet submitted a proposal, you might find it helpful to review the types of funded projects submitted by your colleagues, as well as the kinds of proposals submitted overall, to get a sense of the great variety of projects that have been successful and agencies that funded them. Of course, that is only the starting place.
It is more important now than ever to partner with external organizations and agencies in order to bring external resources to TCNJ to help support our research and academic programs. As you will see from the attached reports on externally-funded programs, we are continuing to expand upon our success rate, in part because of the increase in the number of proposal submissions, and in part because of improved strategies for targeted funding source identification and more competitive proposals.
In addition to the increase in grant funding in the last four years, there has also been a dramatic increase in corporate support to TCNJ through the TCNJ Foundation. This support continues to be targeted for scholarships, academic programming, student-mentored research, and some faculty research. It is worth noting the following:
- corporate giving grew 160% from FY2004 to FY2008, and
- foundation giving grew 253% from FY2004 to FY2008.
We encourage you to think about your greatest wish list for getting your top research or curricular programs started (or completed) sooner than they would be without external funds. Your good ideas, once developed, are what you can most likely find external funding for, and our professional team is poised to help you. With the addition of two new staff members last spring, our office team is equipped to provide considerable support at each step of the external funding process.
We are delighted to introduce both of these individuals to you. Rebecca McGrath, who joined our office in March 2008, is the Program Assistant for Corporate, Foundation, and Government Support. She has a strong background in non-profit fundraising, and is the lead person on our team for helping to identify funding sources and to set strategies for finding funding for projects. In April 2008, Tiffany Ross joined the office as the Program Assistant/Office Manager. Tiffany’s, expertise is in organizational and project management and use of electronic systems. She is the lead person in the office in providing guidance and support in the use of our in-house electronic proposal development and approval system (ERSPA), as well as assisting in electronic proposal submissions to funding agencies. In addition, she is a valuable resource for general funding questions.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and find plenty of useful information in it. Most importantly, we hope to hear from you soon. We look forward to working with you, your department, your school, or other College groups to seek external funding. Our office and the entire College Advancement Division staff remain committed to partnering with all College entities for your individual and our institutional success in the months and year ahead.
Keith H. Dewey Angela Sgroi
Director of Corporate, Foundation, Director of Grants Operations
and Government Support
We’re Here for You …
 |
So, why come to the Grants office? Well, we are here as a service to the campus community to engage in discussion and strategies for obtaining funding from a wide range of federal, state, local, foundation and corporate funders; to assist in researching potential funding sources; and to assist in proposal development, review and approval, and submission. The OAGSR has a variety of tools that are available to everyone in our TCNJ community who are searching funding. Some pre-scheduled workshops for fund seeking and proposal development are already set up and can be found |