Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate and Professional Education

Sponsored Research Newsletter (10/8/09)

Office of Vice President of Research Update

Last year, the Rutgers Distinguished Faculty talk was run on the first Monday of each month in the Fiber Optics Auditorium on the Busch campus. This year, there will be two changes. The Distinguished Faculty talks will start at 3:30. In addition, starting at 2pm on the same day and in the same place recently hired faculty in the tenure track will give brief talks on their research. The goal of these talks is to introduce the faculty to the Rutgers community and possibly to find a collaborator or two in a different department, school, or campus. The first distinguished speaker is Carolyn Maher of the Graduate School of Education describing a NSF funded project on using a video library to understand and improve mathematics teaching. We are still finalizing the list of new faculty speaking.

Rutgers has launched a recovery act web site, http://recovery.rutgers.edu/, that contains information on the awards funded under the ARRA. To date, over $21M of recovery act grants have been funded.

Rutgers GrantNet is emailed several times a month and is also available as a blog. http://rutgers-grantnet.blogspot.com GrantNet recently ran a special issue on awards and prizes http://rutgers-grantnet.blogspot.com/2009/09/foundation-prize-competitions.html that faculty may apply for. [Top]

Stay Within the Lines: Returned Without Review

Unfortunately, several faculty have recently submitted proposals to NSF and NIH and had the proposal returned for not following the guidelines. This is happening nationwide as agencies are under increased pressure to be accountable, and one way to demonstrate this is adhering to all of the little regulations. (It's hard to judge good science, but anyone can count the number of lines on a page). This is particularly important at NIH because the proposal format is changing. More than twenty Transformative R01s at NIH were not reviewed because they were too long or had too many references. NSF proposals have recently been returned for not having a broader impact statement in the proposal summary, not including the current and pending support of co-PIs and not having CVs of all participants. We've also had NSF proposals where the PI had 48 hours to resubmit, removing extra information (honors and awards) from the CV.

See http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf09_29/gpg_index.jsp for NSF submissions before Jan 4, 2010 and http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf101 for submissions starting January 4, 2010.

See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-149.html to learn about the new NIH formats (and attend the following workshop). [Top]

Introduction to Effective Grant Writing for NIH

Speaker:Dr. Linda Brzustowicz
Date:Friday, October 23, 2009
Time:10:00 - Noon
Location:Life Sciences Auditorium
 145 Bevier Road, Busch Campus
Map:<http://maps.rutgers.edu/building.aspx?id=1085>

This workshop will discuss strategies for success in obtaining NIH funding together with general advice on proposal writing. Topics will include developing a career strategy for grant applications, tips for developing an effective proposal, what you can (and can't) do to try to favorably influence the review process, and how to make the best use of your grant reviews. Recent changes in the NIH proposal format and review criteria will be reviewed. Strategies for pursuing funding from a variety of agencies to support research will be discussed.

Dr. Brzustowicz is a Professor in the Department of Genetics conducting research focused on understanding the genetic component of psychiatric illnesses, particularly schizophrenia and autism. Dr. Brzustowicz has served as a NIH peer-reviewer for the past 12 years, including serving as a permanent member of two study sections and an ad hoc reviewer on five different regular study sections and sixteen special emphasis panels. She has also served on seven NIH committees to discuss research priorities, enhancing specific grant mechanisms, and the scope of study section review areas. Dr. Brzustowicz has also served as a reviewer for nine other foundations and government agencies, including 14 years of service on review committees for the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. Since starting at Rutgers as an Assistant Professor in 1994, Dr. Brzustowicz has been awarded 22 grants as Principal Investigator, including over $11M in funding in seven awards from NIH and over $2M in15 awards from nine different state and private agencies. Her most recent award was a Challenge Grant from NIH, one of only several hundred awarded nationally from over 20,000 applications. [Top]

Video Mosaic Collaborative for Improving the Learning and Teaching of Mathematics: Rutgers Distinguished Faculty Talk

Speaker:Dr. Carolyn Maher
Date:Monday, November 2, 2009
Time:3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Location:Fiber Optics Auditorium
 607 Taylor Road, Busch Campus
Map:<http://maps.rutgers.edu/building.aspx?id=133>

This lecture will introduce highlights from a unique collection of video and related data that have been amassed at Rutgers through two decades of research conducted by Carolyn Maher and colleagues at the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning (RBDIL). The video collection includes over 4,500 hours of source videos and emanates from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of the development of mathematical ideas and ways of reasoning of students, which were conducted in formal and informal educational settings and supported with National Science Foundation funding. Synthesizing the video data from several content strands on mathematical reasoning has led to the current NSF study, the Video Mosaic Collaborative (VMC). The VMC is a partnership among Rutgers University Libraries, the RBDIL, and the University of Wisconsin - Madison that is leveraging research-based resources, building new digital tools, and using them for research on teacher education. The VMC project has dual goals of (1) preservation and storage of the video collection from the RBDIL in the Rutgers Community Repository from which they can be accessed, and (2) examination of how the knowledge of content and pedagogy for teaching mathematics as a thoughtful subject can be enhanced through teachers' studying video of how children reason while involved in mathematical problem solving. The talk will describe the Davis Institute's partnership with the Rutgers Digital Library group and how this work is harnessing cyber infrastructure and using workflow programming to facilitate use of the video collection to conduct innovative research in teacher education contexts.

Carolyn A. Maher is Professor II of Mathematics Education and the Director of the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning at the Graduate School of Education of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She is Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. Her research, consisting of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, has focused on the development of mathematical ideas and mathematical reasoning in learners over time, and has been supported by over $15 Million in grant funding. Most noteworthy is the longitudinal study that followed the mathematical thinking of a cohort group of students doing mathematics in and out of classrooms, now beginning its 22nd year and tracking the subjects as young professionals. The first 12 years of the longitudinal study are featured in the Private Universe Project in Mathematics, a one-hour documentary produced by River Run media and a series of six video workshops for teacher professional development that was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her other research includes a three-year study of middle school students' informal mathematics learning in an after-school setting in an urban NJ school district. She recently completed work on an NSF REESE Synthesis grant that selected video episodes on children's mathematical reasoning as representative samples from prior studies for inclusion in a prototype of a searchable database accessible via the Internet. Building on the Synthesis work, she and her colleagues were awarded a four-year collaborative research grant from the NSF, Cyber-Enabled Design Research to Enhance Teachers' Critical Thinking Using a Major Video Collection, in which they are focusing on teacher education and how studying video episodes of children's learning from prior research potentially can improve teachers' abilities to reason mathematically. In addition, she is Co-PI on another newly awarded NSF grant, NJ Partnership for Excellence in Middle School Mathematics. Professor Maher has published over 130 papers with 55 refereed journal articles and book chapters; she has given over 30 invited lectures, plenary sessions, and keynote addresses in 12 countries, and she has chaired over 60 doctoral dissertations. She was invited co-chair of the Topic Study Group for "New Trends in Mathematics Education Research" at the Eleventh International Congress on Mathematics Education, held in July 2008. She gave the invited keynote lecture Critical Thinking Skills in Schools and Museums at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies in June 2007. She was a plenary speaker at the 26th PME in Norwich, England, 2002, Senior Lecturer at the International Congress for Mathematics Education in Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004, and Plenary Speaker at the University of Helsinki Conference in Finland, 2004. She received her B.A., M.Ed. and Ed.D. from Rutgers University. [Top]

SBE Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants

An important NSF program to support doctoral research in the social and behavioral sciences is the Doctoral Dissertation Research grants. A faculty member must apply for research done by a Ph.D. student. These grants provide funds for items not normally available through the student's university. Additionally, these grants allow doctoral students to undertake significant data-gathering projects and to conduct field research in settings away from their campus that would not otherwise be possible. Proposals are judged on the basis of their scientific merit, including the theoretical importance of the research question and the appropriateness of the proposed data and methodology to be used in addressing the question.

Last year, Rutgers received five of these awards from NSF. The universities with the most are University of Arizona (26), University of California-Berkeley (25), University of Michigan Ann Arbor(20), Indiana University (17), Arizona State University (16), and University of Colorado at Boulder (15). One reason that Rutgers received fewer than these schools is that fewer than 15 applications were submitted. My office will be working with the Graduate School New Brunswick to increase the number of applications and to mentor and polish the applications.

See http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13453 for the NSF announcement. The deadline is January 15, except for Anthropology (anytime) Geography and Spatial Sciences (October 15) and Sociology (October 15, 2009). The average award was $11,838 and the largest was $42,150. The table below shows the number of awards given out for each area within SBE.

97CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
95GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL SCIENCES
65PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
62ARCHAEOLOGY
53SOCIOLOGY
33SCIENCE, TECH & SOCIETY
32POLITICAL SCIENCE
32LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
28LINGUISTICS
17DECISION RISK & MANAGEMENT SCI
17ECONOMICS
5ARCTIC SOCIAL SCIENCES
2ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

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New Faculty Workshop: Research Funding and Commercialization: Oct 30

A workshop will be held on Oct 30 to provide information on research funding and technology commercialization to new faculty. (Old faculty are welcome too!)

Friday, October 30, 2009
8:30-1:00pm

Rutgers Student Center (click here <http://maps.google.com/maps?q=126%20College%20Avenue,%20New%20Brunswick,%20 NJ%2008901> for driving directions)

Multipurpose Room A, College Ave. Campus

8:30 a.m.
Registration

9:00 a.m.
Overview of Day's Schedule
Receive an overview of the day's events from Dr. Karen R. Stubaus, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director, Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity.

9:10 a.m.
Importance of Research in Achieving Faculty Excellence
Listen to Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Philip Furmanski, who will speak about the significance of research and graduate education at Rutgers University.

9:30 a.m.
Overview of Research at Rutgers
Michael Pazzani, Vice President for Research & Graduate and Professional Education
Title: How to Succeed in Research

9:50 a.m.
Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP)
Sheryl Goldberg, Director ORSP
Title or description: Pre-Award Procedures

10:10 a.m.
IRB - Use of Human Subjects in Research
Kathryn Green, Associate Professor Communications
Title or description: Overview of IRB

10:30 a.m.
Office of Proposal Development (OPD)
Michael Mueller, Senior Grant Facilitator-Office of Vice President for Research
Title or description: Finding External Funding & Proposal Writing

10:50 a.m.
BREAK

11:05 a.m.
Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC)
Yair Harel, Associate Director Ventures & Engineering Technologies
Title or description: Overview of OTC

11:25 a.m.
Laboratory Animal Services (LAS)
Bob Harris, Director LAS
Title or description: IACUC & Use of Animals in Research

11:45 a.m.
Questions & Answers

12:00 p.m.
Lunch

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NSF Opportunities