Collaborative Research: PRIMER - A model to strengthen the research enterprise at predominantly undergraduate institutions

PRIMER – the PRimarily undergraduate Institution Management Excellence in Research program - will develop a new model for post-award training to advance the research enterprise at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). PRIMER aims to upskill research administrators so they can better assist researchers in more successfully managing their awards. PRIMER will leverage the Colleges of Liberal Arts Sponsored Programs (CLASP) community, representative of 1,921 public and private PUIs, to test and validate a relational model for strengthening grants management including stage-by-stage support structures, training modules, compliance coaching, and a resource repository. The resource repository will be a searchable, open-source platform for training materials and post-award templates, collaboratively conceived and designed to share institutional knowledge within and across participating institutions. The repository will be permanently housed as a University of South Florida Digital Commons collection. The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) serves as the initial development site for the PRIMER model that will then be adapted and scaled through the CLASP community, with 12 pilot sites providing baseline and preliminary data to inform studies of impact at scale at 30 demonstration sites. Training modules will address topics of grant accounting, compliance, reporting and data management for post-award research administrators. The modules will enable quick upskilling through stackable micro credentials to improve the quality of grants management and increase the pipeline to research administration careers. PRIMER will publish detailed case studies of the implementation of the model at TCNJ and other CLASP institutions, which can serve as a starting point for rural colleges, non-profits, small businesses, private research laboratories, and local education agencies. The adoption of the PRIMER model will improve award management and support increased institutional research activities by producing a better trained workforce to support the research enterprise. 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.