California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) is a public Hispanic-serving, minority-serving, primarily undergraduate institution (PUI). As a PUI, CSUDH focuses more on teaching than research, and faculty have heavy teaching loads. This limits faculty time for grantwriting and creates a substantial need for support from the Office of Sponsored Research and Programs (OSRP). In response to its 2014 strategic plan and to raise graduation rates, CSUDH is hiring more tenure-track faculty, increasing its emphasis on research, and providing students, most of whom are low-income or from underrepresented groups, with more high-impact practices, including undergraduate research. To increase faculty applications for external support, CSUDH has invested significantly in sponsored research, e.g., combining pre- and post-award functions in one hybrid office, hiring a director for Sponsored Research and Programs, and Faculty Research Development, as well as creating an office of undergraduate research. But with the influx of 120 assistant professors in the past five years, many of whom are eager to pursue external funding for research, the sponsored-programs office lacks the resources to provide sufficient support.
The specific aims of the project, which align with the CSUDH strategic plan, are to a) Increase the capacity of OSRP to strengthen faculty research, increase innovation and engage students in research. b) Increase efficiency and consistency of OSRP through dissemination of policies and procedures. c) Enhance ability of faculty to develop and submit competitive biomedical research proposals. NIH SPAD funding will enable a rapid transformation of CSUDH's sponsored programs office to make it responsive to the university's and faculty's growing needs. Within three years, CSUDH will be on track to house numerous NIH principal investigators, similar to our sister CSU campuses, who can train the next generation of biomedical scholars and diversify the future workforce. Long-term, institutionalizing successful SPAD strategies will increase the total number and dollar value of external awards and NIH awards, involve many more undergraduates in research, and increase the number of CSUDH graduates from underrepresented groups who achieve PhDs in biomedical fields. The design and methods include 1) Strategically hiring new staff and comprehensively training current OSRP staff to provide high-quality support to faculty who are planning to submit proposals or managing awards; 2) Institutionalizing policies and operational procedures for efficient operation of OSRP and disseminating them, along with proposal-preparation material, via campus-wide trainings and a one-stop, self-service website for faculty; and 3) Expanding a successful pilot program to provide biomedical faculty with an NIH-specific yearlong training program, mentoring by external experts, and summer pay to write NIH R15, SCORE and R25 proposals. This multifaceted approach addresses CSUDH's fundamental barriers to increasing biomedical research, CSUDH's SPAD project will achieve maximum impact within a short time on faculty research, external funding, and undergraduate research opportunities.
NIH support for SPAD at California State University, Dominguez Hills will 1) evaluate and enhance sponsored-program services, 2) establish research-related procedures to achieve consistency and regulatory compliance, 3) develop and disseminate research-related services, policies, and procedures, 4) provide NIH-specific grant-writing training and mentorship to faculty to produce competitive proposals, and 5) institutionalize the changes and sustain long- term growth in sponsored program administration to increase NIH-funded research and external funding. As CSUDH continues to hire faculty who aspire to be teacher-researchers that educate the next generation of diverse biomedical scholars, the institution must provide outstanding academic programs that include high-impact practices, including undergraduate research, to assist students, especially those from underrepresented groups, in timely completion of a degree.
