Office of Sponsored Research Leads Workshops for Faculty and Research Staff
This summer, Bryn Mawr’s Office of Sponsored Research hosted colleagues from several other liberal arts colleges and universities for a workshop on how research administration staff at Primary Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) can best support faculty given their myriad responsibilities.
The workshop, led by Director of Sponsored Research Sarah Robertson, was funded through a National Science Foundation Growing Research Access for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity grant (#2324517).
“We’re very fortunate at Bryn Mawr in that we have greater means to fund faculty research than most liberal arts colleges,” says Robertson. “But we’re still a small team, and that means we have to be able to do both research administration and development, as do our colleagues at other schools. We’re interested in seeing how we can work together to help even the research support playing field between our institutions and the larger research universities.”
The two-day workshop drew 16 participants. Workshops were also held at Pomona College and the University of Southern Indiana, and one virtually via Zoom. Overall, 67 research administration and development professionals took part.
Robertson is the principal investigator (PI) for the project. She and her four co-PIs are now taking what was learned in the workshops to develop a suite of practical recommendations to mitigate the challenges of grant submission at PUIs.
According to the latest Higher Education Research and Development Survey, Bryn Mawr had more than $9 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal year 2022. The College was ranked number one among liberal arts colleges for research expenditures by Washington Monthly in its 2024 college rankings.
The Provost’s Office and the Office of Sponsored Research also co-hosted 20 faculty and staff for a full-day training provided by the Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) this summer. ARIS’s mission includes helping researchers improve and further develop their broader impacts when applying for National Science Foundation funding. Broader impacts are an essential part of the mission of the NSF as it addresses how research can influence more than just the academic community by creating connections between academic researchers and partners locally, regionally, and beyond.
The training provided the attendees with a rich basis for future research projects, outreach and grant applications by training on the basics on what broader impacts are, how to support more robust community engagement, and how to create a wider impact of the research conducted on campus.
“Small teaching intensive colleges like Bryn Mawr are not often able to provide such research focused training and is a testament to the College’s investment in innovative research as well as community engagement,” says Abby Gilman, Bryn Mawr’s Research Grants and Compliance Manager.