Intramural Faculty Grant Programs Len Paplauskas 17 May 1994 09:20 EST
I'm not sure if a previous attempt to post this worked, since I sent it via a different approach. Also, in the previous attempt I was unable to include a subject line, so bearing in mind the admonitions of previous posters, I'm trying again. Sorry if this is a dup. ______________________________________________________ In response to several questions about UCHC's program, and such programs in general: 1) To "Speechless", UCHC's program has been in place for almost 20 years. The source of support is UCHC "funds" which could conceivably be generated in a variety of ways, e.g., clinical income, recovered indirect costs, etc. Practically speaking, however, the amount allocated for such programs is generally tied to a percentage of the income from indirect cost recovery. The program was set up because of strong faculty input about the need for such a program, as well as the level. 2) Regarding matching funds, our equpment and new faculty start-up programs have always had a matching requirement. The source of this matching may be from departmental or school resources, existing grants, discretionery funds available to the applicant, etc. From our "program's" perspective, the source of the matching support is irrelevant, as long as it is there. 3) Regarding the payment of peer reviewers, the question has never come up before. We have never had a problem with reviewers agreeing to read and comment upon a proposal, irregardless of whether they are from UCHC or outside the institution. It's an intriguing point, however! Do peer reviewers who are paid an honorarium do a better job in reviewing a proposal? My guess is that for $100 you'd get the same type of variability in review quality as we get for nothing. ***I HAVE A QUESTION FOR THE NET ON THIS TOPIC*** Has any institution with a significant intramural grants program ever conducted an in depth analysis of the effectiveness of their program(s)? Since I assume that the objectives of each institution's program may vary, you'd have to evaluate the effectiveness based upon what the goals of the program are. At UCHC, for example, our emergency grants program is designed to keep labs together during funding hiatus, and to help in reestablishing extramural funding. Since the endpoint is extramural funding, we say this program has a "success rate" of 63%. OTOH, our new faculty program is only 38% "successful", but this statistic is misleading since sometimes recipients of funding leave UCHC within a short time after receiving such grants (being a health center we have a lot of movement through our junior clinical ranks). We even conducted an extensive "single-blind" study of faculty attitudes about the importance of these programs (I'm sure you can guess the outcome of that survey). I would be very interested in learning about approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of such programs, criteria used, methodologies, etc. at other institutions. In this era of continually shrinking resources, I have to work very hard to justify the continuance of such programs. L -------------------------------------------------------------------- Leonard P. Paplauskas Assistant Vice President for Research | 203-679-3173 University of Connecticut Health Center | FAX 679-2670 Farmington, CT 06030-5355 | | xxxxxx@neuron.uchc.edu | xxxxxx@sun1.uchc.edu | --------------------------------------------------------------------