Advocacy
Agency Advocacy
GRC staff, campus-based leaders, and partner organizations work together to improve grant systems and remove barriers to successful application submissions. Explore the accomplishments of the Community and Economic Development Task Force, Health Research and Education Task Force, and Grants.gov Task Force below, and find out more about GRC partners and affiliates.
Task Forces
Community and Economic Development
In August 2009, GRC convened the Community and Economic Development Task Force to establish models of research and sponsored programs that promote institutional-community partnerships and innovation transfer leading to healthy communities and regional economic development.
The task force operates in three committees: Community Development; Economic and Workforce Development; and Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer. Via their offices of research and sponsored programs, AASCU and GRC member institutions are receiving in-depth, practical knowledge through policy-sharing, analysis of model programs and their potential replicability, and a monthly web conference series. This web-based training is delivered in 90-minute sessions led by national experts in the issues surrounding community and economic development, paired with moderators who know the particular factors faced by comprehensive universities engaged in efforts to improve their local communities and the national economy.
A companion series providing high-level synthesis of the most pressing issues covered in the regular web conference series will be launched in January 2012. Presidents and provosts will receive briefings on the legislation, federal policy changes, agency requirements, and funding streams that can promote—or impede—successful community and economic development initiatives at the institutional level.
The products of task force work help GRC members anticipate shifts in the community, economic, and workforce development terrain.
Health Research and Education
The Health Research and Education Task Force was established in January 2010 with two goals. First, to build on existing relationships with the leaders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), to guide their development of programs and funding mechanisms targeting non-research intensive institutions. Simultaneously, the task force is creating a culture of awareness on GRC campuses about the research requirements, application development skills, networking, and peer review knowledge that lead to a record of successful funding requests.
GRC leaders worked closely with the NIH director’s office and extramural research office during the overhaul of the NIH peer review process. The task force has also begun discussions with AHRQ leadership to define specific strategies to increase both AHRQ’s and NIH’s support for excellent biomedical and behavioral research and health-related workforce development conducted by non-research intensive institutions. The task force also has given detailed input into NIH’s examination of institutional capacity building.
Current task force priorities include working with NIH on a pipeline program involving AASCU institutions and community college partners, conducting additional NIH applicant training, developing mentoring partnerships, and launching a program to foster equipment sharing between teaching-intensive institutions and research-intensive institutions.
Grants.gov
In 2007, GRC mobilized members to respond to problems in the development and execution of Grants.gov, which was conceived as the government’s single portal for posting federal funding opportunities and submitting applications. The Grants.gov Task Force identified the five challenges that were having the greatest impact on GRC members’ time, efficiency, and volume of application submissions. They succeeded in convincing Grants.gov leadership of the importance of the changes, and saw three of their recommendations implemented almost immediately.
The task force continues to work closely with the Grants.gov leadership team on community outreach, training improvement, and system change requests. In addition, the task force has led GRC efforts to negotiate substantial discounts with proposal development and grant management software companies, giving GRC members access to systems that historically have been too expensive for teaching-intensive, predominantly undergraduate institutions to justify the investment.
Partners
Association of University Technology Managers
Cayuse, Inc.
Grant Training Center
InfoReady Corporation
Affiliates
Association of Public and Land-grant Institutions
Council on Governmental Relations
Council on Undergraduate Research
Federal Demonstration Partnership
National Council of University Research Administrators
National Grants Partnership
Society of Research Administrators, International
State Science and Technology Institute