Research Infrastructure: GRANTED: Creating Sustainable Research Infrastructure

Minority serving institutions (MSIs) fuel diverse and collaborative research that can lead to new and expanded areas of inquiry and discovery. Without significant investment in human capacity and other institutional resources however, MSIs, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and emerging research institutions (ERIs) sometimes find it difficult to recruit and maintain research-active faculty, build productive research collaborations, and broaden participation in research activity.

This project will address the challenges faced by MSIs, HBCUs, and ERIs, by testing the impact of growing the administrative capacity needed to effectively compete for and manage grant and contract awards and the complex compliance requirements that accompany them.

Grambling State University’s GRANTED project will create an adaptable and scalable model for building and sustaining research support infrastructure at MSIs, HBCUs, and ERIs. The project aims to examine the impact of increasing capacity to support the pursuit and management of externally sponsored grant and contract award funding for research, training, and services.

The specific goals of this project are to 1) Enhance research capacity and competitiveness, 2) Strengthen research and sponsored programs staff development opportunities, 3) Enhance research process optimization, and, 4) Establish continuous research performance improvements. Project partners include the National Organization for Research Development Professionals, National Sponsored Programs Administrators Alliance, Society for Research Administrators, International, National Council for University Research Administrators, and the National Contract Management Association.

Successful implementation of this project will lead to increased research grant and contract funding at Grambling State University, as well the delivery of a transformative model for sustainable growth and development of a research enterprise that can be utilized by other MSIs, HBCUs, and ERIs.

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.