Foster Increased Research Productivity

Enhance research productivity by aligning research with curriculum, leveraging partnerships and facilitating international collaborations. Efforts will address external and internal barriers, increase funding, support student research, promote interdisciplinary activities and evaluate the feasibility of obtaining an R2 designation:

 

Identify opportunities for expansion

  • Align research and creative activities with curriculum, so they are mutually reinforced.
  • Leverage community and business partnerships to increase resources supporting research and creative activities.
  • Facilitate collaborations between MSU faculty and faculty at our international partner institutions, including promoting existing programs.

Address external barriers

  • Identify potential areas of research strength with a higher possibility of success in securing external funding and then develop strategies for investing increased financial and human resources.
  • Establish a task force and devote financial resources to address publishing costs in high-quality journals.

Address internal barriers

  • Increase internal funding allocated to research.
  • Expand funding and other support for student research experiences at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
  • Promote interdisciplinary research and decrease siloed research activities (address disincentives created by the cost-center model).
  • Reconfigure award amounts for and increase financial resources devoted to the Faculty Research Grants (FRG) and Summer Faculty Fellowships (SFF).
  • Encourage recognition of small grant achievements as a stepping-stone for larger funding.
  • Evaluate teaching and research laboratory space and analogous spaces for creative activities; then, expand and update these facilities as needed. Develop procedures for shared use across campus.
  • Evaluate financial and staffing needs for research compliance and increase as needed.

Assess the feasibility and desirability of obtaining an R2 designation

  • Complete a study of the feasibility and desirability of earning a Carnegie R2 designation:
    • Evaluate which programs could expand to offer PhDs and market demand for those degrees.
    • Evaluate resources that would be necessary (e.g., reduced standard teaching loads, additional faculty lines, dramatically increased financial support for research).
  • Increase lobbying efforts to remove legal barriers to an R2 designation based on outcomes of feasibility and desirability.