Council on Research Meeting Minutes

Council on Research Meeting Minutes November 22, 2013 Life Sciences Research Building, Conference Room 1143 9:30am-11:30am

Members present: Aiguo Dai, Tina DeMarco, Samantha Friedman, Kevin Knuth, John Monfasani, Jennifer Montimurro

Members absent: James Dias (represented by Adrienne Bonilla), Lisa Donohue, Erzsebet Fazekas, Hemalata Iyer, Igor Kuznetsov, Kajal Lahiri, Janet Marler, Loretta Pyles, Yangzi Isabel Tian

Also attending: Adrienne Bonilla, Asher Pauli, Thecla Philip and Theresa Walker

Note: There were not enough members in attendance to have a quorum, so no votes were taken at this meeting.

Call to Order The meeting was called to order by Council on Research Chair, John Monfasani, at 9:38am.

Approval of October 18 Meeting Minutes

There were not enough members in attendance to have a quorum to approve the minutes.

Vice President for Research report – no report

Old business: FRAP-A Guidelines revision concerning PIs in consecutive years

As agreed at the October meeting, Janet Marler and John Monfasani drafted new text clarifying the eligibility of prior year FRAP award recipients. It is as follows:

Faculty members may hold two consecutive awards. However, applicants without an award the previous year will receive preference when all other considerations are equal.

Discussion of the issue noted several points. It was suggested that it might be useful to revise the wording to indicate that receiving an award in the previous year doesn’t disqualify you, rather than the looser interpretation that applicants “may hold” consecutive awards. It was noted that the most important aspect of the award program is that faculty members get something out of it, which may be difficult to tell a year on from the time the award is received. It was agreed that progress reports at the end of the year would be useful both for faculty to monitor the project and for COR to monitor the effectiveness of the award program. Members voiced the concern that a proposal should stand on its own merit, rather than being judged based on whether the faculty member previously had a FRAP award or not. It was noted that the point of the award program is to provide seed funding to encourage faculty members to obtain federal funding; enabling previous recipients to apply in consecutive years should stipulate that it must be for separate and distinct projects. The point was also raised that the guidelines should state that applicants who have received multiple FRAP awards without obtaining external funding would be negatively viewed.

Council on Research minutes November 22, 2013Page 1/4 It was agreed that it was necessary to look at the overall structure of the guidelines, including the review process. It was recommended that FRAP recipients be required to submit a progress report each year by June 1. Action: John Monfasani is to edit the proposed text for discussion at the December meeting.

New business: Review eligibility of first-year faculty in relation to FRAP and other (conference, journal etc) awards.

It was generally agreed that faculty members should not be applying for FRAP funding for projects that are already funded through other sources. While it was felt that new faculty the university wanted to attract here should not be excluded from the process or limited in what forms of funding are available to them, the concern was expressed that 3rd or 4th year assistant professors might be at a disadvantage for funding their research compared to people with start-up funds. However, it was noted that startup funds are often specifically earmarked for equipment etc., rather than being discretionary or available for use for labor, datasets etc. It was recommended that applicants should note all funding available for the proposed project and when they received the existing funding. It was also recommended that existing funding should be assessed as a factor in the review process, not that applicants with existing funding would be disqualified. If applicants have existing funding for a project, they should be required to show how the funding they have won’t cover the cost of the project, which would then be more likely to obtain federal/external funding. It was also noted that if the guidelines are changed, it will be necessary to bring the change to the attention of department chairs. It will also be necessary to address how the funding issue is to be handled during the review process. Action: John Monfasani is to draft text to address the eligibility of applicants with existing funding, to the effect that they should be eligible to apply but must give details of existing funding and when they received the funds.

Review of FRAP guidelines for how to handle co-PIs from different schools

If an application for a FRAP award involves co-PIs in different schools, it was agreed that the application should be sent to both schools for review, as it was noted that the review committees in each school would have local knowledge of the individual PIs that might not be available either to the other school or to the COR review subcommittee. It was recommended that the questions on the application should be answered for both co-PIs on the given project. Action: Asher Pauli volunteered to provide sample language on how co-PIs are handled for external/federal funding; John Monfasani will then draft text to require that applications involving co-PIs from other schools must be submitted through the schools of both applicants, making it clear that it is the same project. The information would then be consolidated for COR review.

Requirement for FRAP recipients to submit a final report

A copy of the letter template which is sent to FRAP recipients was distributed. During the discussion on the eligibility of applicants with start-up funding it was agreed that progress reports should be required to be submitted by June 1 of each year of the award. Action: John Monfasani is to draft text in this regard.

Review of recommendations of the CAS FRAP review committee (recommendations noted in italics)

“(i) Collaborative/interdisciplinary research should be clarified. One way of doing so is for authors of future FRAP-A proposals to provide a brief (few sentences only) section providing their description of how the proposal could be viewed as being collaborative/interdisciplinary”

The concern raised by the CAS FRAP committee was that this requirement in the application is unclear. In order for a project to be collaborative it requires more than one PI; however, the rest of the application

Council on Research minutes November 22, 2013Page 2/4 indicates the involvement of only one PI. The FRAP program is intended to promote research among assistant professors, and it was remarked that collaboration isn’t necessarily good for assistant professors trying to define themselves within their field. It was also queried whether a project can be interdisciplinary within the same department; for instance, within some of the Humanities departments there are widely differing avenues of study. Finally, it was noted that the category requires that a project be collaborative and interdisciplinary. It was suggested that the category section on page one of the application packet ask that applicants explain how their proposal is collaborative and interdisciplinary and how that would be advantageous for external grant funding. Action: John Monfasani volunteered to draft text in this regard.

(ii.) If applicants have submitted proposals to external funding sources, and been declined, the rational for that outcome should be provided (e.g. attachment from funding agency) in order to show how the FRAP-A proposal is specifically designed to address the weaknesses in the past proposal.

It was agreed that it should be known if the application had been submitted for external funding and not been funded; however, as item 5 indicates “proposals for work to improve an application for re- submission to an external agency are high priority applications”, it appears likely that applicants would include that information as it would be beneficial to their application.

(iii.) The criterion of consecutive FRAP funding should be clarified in the guidelines. One 2013 FRAP-A proposal came from individuals who had previously received FRAP-A funding for two years (2011-2013). Need clarity whether applicants are eligible if they have an active FRAP account or if they can have two concurrent FRAP accounts if they are awarded in non-consecutive years or if the proposals are different.

This issue was handled earlier in the meeting.

(iv.) Several of the FRAP-A proposals appeared to be text that had been cut-and-pasted from proposals to external funding agencies. Since that text was written for researchers in specialized programs, the narrative did not conform to the FRAP-A guidelines of writing in a fashion that is understandable to reviewers outside their specialty. Authors need to be aware that reviewers lower the scores of proposals that are burdened with undefined jargon.

It was noted that the guidelines indicate that “The review is conducted by academic colleagues from various units of the University and the proposal writing should be understandable to such colleagues outside your area of research specialization. Clear writing is valuable.” Applicants should already know to write clearly not in jargon, and it was agreed based on experience that emphasizing the point wouldn’t help matters.

(v.) Several proposals did not cite any literature in the introduction or background sections. In the future, FRAP-A guidelines should be revised to make it clearer to applicants that references/citations are strongly recommended. Otherwise it is difficult for the committee to discern the significance of the proposed research.

It was remarked that in these cases applicants were overcompensating the opposite way from issue (iv) and writing too much for the layperson audience without references to literature. It was agreed that it was necessary for applicants to back up their statements on the relevance of the project to the field, etc. It was noted that ideally applicants should cite appropriate literature but “write in such a way that their parents would understand”.

Council on Research minutes November 22, 2013Page 3/4 Other comments

Samantha Friedman confirmed that the Benevolent Awards review would be completed by the December meeting and recommendations would be provided at that time.

Jennifer Montimurro noted that the Researchers Liaison Committee still needs one member. Action: John Monfasani agreed to find a volunteer if given the details of what is required for the committee.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:47am.

Submitted by Elizabeth Rooks

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