By Heather Ewer
Western Herald
Kohler
Staff and students were able to get a full picture of the research structure at Western Michigan University Tuesday from the new associate vice president of research.
Paula Kohler, Ph.D., gave a presentation at WMU’s Evaluation Center entitled, “The Direction for Research at WMU.”
Kohler has been in the position since May 2009. She began her discussion by informing the staff members that she would try to debunk the myths of what the Office of Vice President Research does and does not do.
The OVPR is responsible for supporting faculty and students who wish to engage in research projects on and off-campus. The office seeks to help researchers gain internal and external funding for their projects.
WMU is one of 76 universities in the nation classified as a “research university with high activity.”
They were awarded the classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in March of 2006.
Kohler said she is trying to improve the work that her office is doing. She told the room full of Evaluation Center staffers that their goal is to focus on smoother information flow between their office and faculty on campus.
To accomplish this, the OVPR is updating their Web site in hopes that information will be more accessible, including a new research proposal review and approval forms that people can edit using Microsoft Word.
“Everything used to be done in paper, and you’d have to hand your form to Grants and Contracts,” Kohler said. “We’ve done away with that.”
There is also a new budget template on the OVPR Web site, which will be easy to fill out for those who are unfamiliar with budget proposals.
The OVPR also used to have to track down information by hand, according to Kohler. There will be a comprehensive database in place by the fall 2010 semester. The proposals will now go electronically to the Grants and Contracts Office.
There is a new universal calendar that lists each research deadline so people don’t have to dig through the Web site for information that they want quickly.
According to Kohler, the OVPR was understaffed for a while. They were without a fourth research officer and are currently in the process of interviewing a new administrative assistant.
Emeritus researcher and past director of the Evaluation Center Arlen Gullickson, Ph.D., expressed his concern that undergraduate and graduate students interested in research don’t know where to go to take their interest to the next level.
Gullickson suggested more professor/student interaction in this area.
“Our professors are good,” Gullickson said. “They have the skills. They can mentor these students.”
Gullickson suggested that the office promote research among undergraduate students with a brochure on the Web site to inform them of their options.
Kohler mentioned that the OVPR does offer undergraduate research excellence awards that provide students up to $200 a semester to work on a project with an externally funded faculty mentor. Applications for the award are due on either Sep. 22 or Jan. 22 of each year.
The staffers at the Evaluation Center who do not have WMU faculty status are ineligible for the FRACAA, or Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award. This award is considered internal funding from WMU.
Kohler informed the staff members in attendance that they could still speak with the research officers and use their information as a resource to seek external funding for their projects.
At the conclusion of the lunch meeting, a few graduate students in the IDPE program (Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Evaluation) expressed their concern that some of their questions were not addressed.
Lindsay Noakes, one of the graduate students spoke about the Facilities and Administrative Rate, known as an Fee and Assessment rate. Currently, the rate is 49 percent for on-campus research projects, meaning that nearly half of the money awarded to researchers goes back to the university.
“I was really hoping they were going to address the fact that the office is denying requests for a reduced F&A rate,” Noakes said.
Tuesday’s lecture is part of a series hosted by the Evaluation Center called, “The Evaluation Café.” These lunch meetings will be held from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. and are open to the public.
The next lecture will be “How Much Can and Should Written Reports Tell Us about an Evaluation’s Quality?” by Lori Wingate, at 12 p.m. on Feb. 16 in 4405 Ellsworth Hall.
About afox