FY 04 Projects Receiving Funding Awards
	FY 03 Projects Receiving Funding Awards
	Expanding Research Horizons Concepts for a Campus Strategic Plan for Research Developed by the Campus Faculty Research Council

ecently, this campus embarked on an exciting initiative through which we seek to significantly expand and enhance the research activities of the faculty.

Over the years, the faculty of this university has established an excellent record of research accomplishments. The recent initiative, however, seeks to strengthen the research capacity of the institution, and enable the faculty to achieve even greater excellence in this area. And since economic factors play such a key role, growth in external support for research is a basic requirement. However, all good research is valued -- funded or not.

During the past year, significant strides toward meeting the 2010 goal continued to be made. Since FY 01, total external funding has increased by more than a factor of two, while total budgeted new awards (which includes the total budgets of multi-year projects) has increased by more that a factor of four. And during FY 04, both these funding metrics increased over their counterparts for FY 03. External funding committed by sponsors during FY 04 increased over 19%, while total budgets for all newly awarded projects increased by over 43%.

Especially notable, with regard to increased funding this last fiscal year, was the award of two large new federal grants. The first of these grants was an award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for $2.47M to our Network Information and Space Security Center (NISSC) for research and educational programs related to homeland security. NISSC works closely with the DOD's Northern Command and Air Force Space Command.

The second of the new large grants was an award for $5.2M to our Center for Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, funded under the DOD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. This project will focus on giga-hertz electromagnetic wave science, devices, and materials for high-performance communications applications, and will involve collaboration with colleagues from Colorado State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, and Oakland University.

This last fiscal year was another filled with excitement about the research successes of the faculty, and the campus's rapid advancement towards meeting its goals.

Summary of Externally Funded Programs

As noted previously in the Introduction, by 2010 the campus seeks to increase externally funded programs by a factor of five compared to 2001 levels. In 2001, the position of Senior Faculty Associate for Research was created on the campus, and that office was charged with advancing the campus's research activities, especially externally funded activities.

From the outset, the office of the Senior Faculty Associate identified three goals, which if met, would contribute greatly to meeting the campus research objectives. Those goals were as follows:

• To encourage a cultural change on the campus, especially with respect to externally sponsored programs.
   
  
• To enable a stronger campus voice for the research-active faculty.
   
  
• To identify and eliminate unnecessary or inappropriate administrative hurdles for faculty seeking and managing externally funded projects

To assist in accomplishing these goals, a campus wide Faculty Research Council was formed and charged with advising the administration on research policy, recommending improvements in research support services, and suggesting methods for recognizing excellence in research and creative works -- with special emphasis on externally sponsored programs. The members of this Research Council represented a wide range of disciplines, and were selected due to their desire to advance the research agenda. Further, almost all of the members had also been active in seeking and acquiring external funding. Hence, this council was designed to be an effective faculty voice for research.

Consistent with the three above-stated goals, and drawing from recommendations of the Research Council, several campus organizations involved with research administration have been reorganized so as to be more responsive to the needs of faculty seeking funding and/or managing externally funded projects. Also, faculty and staff mentoring programs have been established, and a heightened appreciation of the importance of research (funded or unfunded) has been achieved.

During the 03-04 academic years, the Research Council developed a document entitled "Expanding Research Horizons: Concepts for a Campus Strategic Plan for Research," which enumerates specific steps that the campus must now take to maintain the positive momentum of the research initiative. Thus, the campus now has a roadmap which will help it plan for the future. The concepts identified are grouped in six areas, namely:

1. Continue to strengthen the research culture of the campus (faculty and administration)
2. Leverage critical capabilities
3. Provide high-profile leadership
4. Position the campus for opportunities
5. Provide sustainability
6. Pursue fundraising activities committed to rewarding and enhancing research capacity

In November, 2003, this plan was unanimously endorsed by the full Faculty Assembly, and in December, 2003, it was adopted by the campus administration.

One of the key strategies developed under Leveraging critical capabilities was to identify fruitful multidisciplinary research areas matched with faculty research strengths, and, where appropriate, create research institutes and centers focused on those areas. Listed in Table 1 on the following page are those research units created during the last three years. Also shown are the colleges or departments most heavily involved with the research unit at this time, although each research unit is charged with fostering cross-departmental and cross-college activities.

Several indicators reflect the faculty's enthusiastic support for this new campus research initiative. Shown in Figure 1 below is the history of the growth in the number of proposals for external funding submitted during the fiscal year, for the last four fiscal years. It is noted that this number has almost tripled since 2001, while the number of faculty submitting a proposal during the fiscal year has almost double that for FY 01, as indicated in Figure 2. The 167 proposals submitted by the 88 faculty members in FY 04 should be considered especially in light of the fact that we currently have approximately 200 tenured or tenure-track faculty on campus, and the total number of faculty has remained almost constant over the four-year period being considered here.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Surpassing the increased proposal submission rate is the growth in the total budgets of proposals being submitted. Figure 3 indicates that total proposal budgets have increased by more than a factor of five over the 2001 level. Consistent with this fact, Figure 4 indicates that the average budget level of proposals submitted has increased by almost a factor of three over that for 2001. All these data indicate that the faculty have been participating more in proposal submissions, and that larger projects are being proposed. These larger projects, furthermore, are frequently multi-disciplinary, facilitated by the existence of the centers and institutes noted previously.

Figure 3

Figure 4

These increased proposal submissions have led to significant growth in external funding received. Shown in Figure 5 is the total external funding awarded during FY 04, compared to that for the three prior years. As indicated, funding awarded has increased by more than a factor of 2.5 over that for 2002, while awards for 2002 were down slightly from 2001. The $6.25M received for FY 04 involved 49 individual projects, 42 of which were newly awarded this fiscal year.

Figure 5

A more dramatic increase in a different funding metric is revealed in Figure 6. Data in this figure include the total budgets of all projects newly funded during the respective fiscal year. This metric, therefore, includes the total budgets of any multi-year projects receiving a new award, while the funding reflected in Figure 5 only includes funding committed by the sponsor during the fiscal year indicated. Figure 6 reveals that the total-budget metric has increased by well over a factor of four over that for FY 2001, reaching $13.3M this last year. Hence, given the original goal of increasing external funding for the campus by a factor of five by the year 2010, it would appear that the campus could achieve this goal well before 2010.

Also, when considering the data in Figure 6 in light of that in Figure 3, which showed that total proposed budgets increased by more than a factor of five over those for FY 2001, one concludes that the growth in the size of proposed budgets has not resulted in a diminished funding success rate. That is, the ratio of the total budgets of newly awarded projects to total proposed budgets has remained almost constant at around 30 percent since FY 2001, while the number of submissions and average budget levels of proposals have increased significantly. This is indeed gratifying, and attests to the quality of the research and the proposals being submitted. A list of all projects receiving funding commitments during FY 04 (reflected in the data in Figure 5) is presented in Appendix B to this report.

Figure 6

The breakdown regarding the sources of funding for the FY 04 awards (Figure 5) is presented in Figure 7 below. These data indicate that 65.3 percent of the FY 04 funding received was from federal sources (e.g., NSF, NIH) while 21.6 percent was from state or local governmental sources. Rounding out the other sources, seven percent was received from other universities (which may originally be federally funded projects), three percent was received from foundations, two percent from miscellaneous non-federal sources, and approximately one percent was received from industry sources.

Finally, Figure 8 reveals the breakdown on the activities funded by the FY 04 awards. Specifically, $4.81M in awards funded research activities, $1.19M in awards funded activities related to instruction or training, and $0.25M supported public-service activities.

Figure 7

Figure 8

In summary, by 2010 the campus seeks to increase externally funded programs by a factor of five compared to 2001 levels. The progress made by the campus towards meeting this goal is summarized below in Table 2. For each of the funding metrics shown, the factor of growth for FY 04 over FY 01 in each metric is listed. For example, in FY 04, the number of proposals submitted has increased by approximately a factor of 3 over the number submitted in FY 01. Based on this data, it appears that the campus is well on its way to meeting its ambitious 2010 goal.

About the Campus

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) was founded in 1965, and is the newest and smallest campus of the University of Colorado System. It is also the fastest growing campus in the System, as well as in the State of Colorado. The current student enrollment is approximately 7,700 student, 1,600 of which are graduate students. Most of the student population comes from within Colorado, with seven percent of the student body from outside the state. For the last several years, the campus has been experiencing double-digit annual enrollme nt growth, and the enrollment is expected reach 10,000 students by the year 2010.