Conference: Increasing STEM Grant Capacity Across West Virginia

The goal of this project is to understand the barriers to research grant proposal submission and award management success at West Virginia’s four-year colleges and universities. As research grant administration has become increasingly complex, the submission of competitive research grant proposals and management of research grant funding has become challenging for under-resourced institutions. This project will create solutions to address these challenges by developing a culture of grantsmanship and the necessary support mechanisms to ensure sponsored research success. The project has the potential to be scaled and utilized as a national model that may be especially applicable to other cohorts of under-resourced institutions. The project will identify the specific barriers to grant success by convening regional meetings, followed by a state-wide conference in which participants from West Virginia’s four-year institutions will identify and document research grant project successes and barriers. A diverse group of stakeholders from primarily undergraduate institutions, research universities, and historically black colleges and universities, including emerging research institutions, will work collaboratively in this project. In addition, this project also addresses the need for developing the research enterprise workforce in West Virginia and activities are included that will grow partnerships with professional societies to address this issue. 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.