In October we shared with the campus community the Operational Plan for Investing in Research, a bold and ambitious roadmap for driving research and scholarship across all disciplines at Brown to a new level of excellence. With strategies to reach our aspirations over the next five to seven years, we established as an essential part of this effort a first stage of work focused on strengthening the foundation needed to reach the future state of excellence defined in the operational plan.

I write today to share the efforts underway since the fall to bolster systems, structures, staffing and stakeholder partnerships — critical building blocks for the progress we’ll make in the coming months and years. Achieving the vision of the operational plan involves working in phases, starting with establishing the strong foundation necessary to move us forward on a trajectory that will build momentum over time.

Aligned with the structure of the operational plan, we are organizing the work ahead into three primary categories. In this letter, I am outlining our progress in building foundational strength in each of these areas.

1. Investing in the Academic Enterprise

2. Strengthening Administrative Support for Research

3. Funding our Growth

The efforts summarized in this letter in each of these three areas represent just a sampling of our early-stage work toward our goal of achieving new heights of excellence in research that will have a transformative impact on people, communities and society locally and around the world. We are focused first on improvements across staffing and operations to make it more seamless to conduct research at Brown. That means looking at every aspect associated with research across the institution and asking, how can we make it better? It also means engaging stakeholders in virtually every area across campus — from our academic enterprise to administrative support — to develop shared solutions on our path to elevating our research excellence. 

I am excited to share the many ways this work is underway as we plan for ever-increasing levels of investment and we build the foundation for growth.

1. Investing in the Academic Enterprise

Investing in our academic enterprise involves everything from physical space to researcher positions to library infrastructure. Our early focus in this area is to begin expanding University funding and support to build and maintain a pipeline of future world-class researchers at Brown. As stated in the operational plan, we want to increase our PhD and postdoctoral researcher populations over time to support the significant growth of research activity we aspire to. Graduate students and postdocs help promising junior scholars develop their own research programs before starting in faculty positions, and they also contribute to innovation and interdisciplinarity that spans divisions. 

Several offices across the University are leading the foundational work to invest in our academic enterprise. Here is a sampling of the efforts underway:

• The Graduate School has driven an increase in admissions targets for PhD programs in the physical and life sciences under the Dean of the Faculty by 25% for next year. This growth is tied to the availability of grant funding and has been made possible through a combination of funding from the Office of the Provost and the Graduate School.

• The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has increased its Humanities Research Funds by 50% for the coming academic year and has added funds for additional Salomon Faculty Research Awards, which are designed to recognize excellence in scholarship by funding exceptional faculty research projects.

• The Dean of the Faculty is piloting a short-term Visiting Professor program focused on bringing top scholars in the humanities and social sciences to campus for several weeks to engage with faculty and students.

• The Office of University Postdoctoral Affairs is leading an initiative to increase our postdoctoral population by 5% next year tied to grant funding. 

• The Dean of the Faculty is leading a Work Group charged with developing consistency in policies, titles, career ladders, salary ranges and standards/criteria for research faculty, staff and postdoctoral scholars.

In addition, the College is working to increase SPRINT-UTRA awards that fund undergraduate students collaborating with Brown faculty on research and teaching projects in research assistantships. Applications this year have more than doubled, and the College offered 200 additional awards – an increase of nearly 50%. 

The additional work ahead will engage faculty and staff in academic departments, schools, centers and institutes across Brown. 

2. Strengthening Administrative Support for Research

We will scale investments over the next five to seven years in areas of critical administrative support to make conducting research at Brown easier. The first phase of our efforts involves assessing staffing, budgets and operations to build strength in research administration, research staff, computing infrastructure, faculty onboarding and a range of administrative processes related to research 

Many of these projects are already underway, with an initial focus on operations supported by OVPR: 

• We are on track to hire several new positions in OVPR by the end of June to help improve and increase service to faculty and research staff, and ensure regulatory compliance. This represents a first stage of hiring, as several support areas across OVPR have been identified for more staffing resources.

• A new system for the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which reviews and approves all research that meets the federal definition of human subject research, is scheduled to go live on May 15, 2023. The new IRB system will massively upgrade infrastructure support for human subjects research protocol submissions, reducing process times and providing a much smoother user experience. 

• We are currently rebuilding the OVPR website into a faculty- and researcher-centric space where resources and other information are easily accessible, and where it will be easy to access and navigate the resources for different stages of conducting research at Brown.  

• OVPR is collaborating with the Office of Information Technology to develop a strategic, multi-year roadmap for upgrading our research systems – an initiative we identified in the operational plan as essential to our future research growth.

Looking ahead, we plan to build on the foundation we are strengthening now by establishing standards for how research administration staffing is structured, as well as standards for local research administration policies. We will implement the approved changes in processes, practices and policies recommended after a review conducted last year by Huron Consulting Group regarding grants management, research integrity, and research contracts.

Beyond the initiatives supported by OVPR that are listed here, additional foundational planning efforts for administrative operations to expand the research enterprise are taking place in a range of offices across the University. These include, but are not limited to, the Library; Office of Planning, Design and Construction in Facilities Management; the Office of Information Technology; the Office of Government and Community Relations; University Human Resources; and many more.

3. Funding our Growth

The operational plan makes clear that, while the University commits millions of dollars every year to support research, growing research at Brown will require significant new investments in several key areas. This includes funding programs to support early-stage research projects, professional development related to research, and grant proposals. 

Our work currently underway is to identify the early-stage resources needed to build strength in core operations and academic and administrative areas across the University that will play important roles in growing investment in research in the coming months and years in the areas described in the first two sections of this letter. 

• We are currently reviewing proposed new institutional investments for the FY24 budget, including direct support for faculty research and research administration.

• We have invested in launching several new major research initiatives since October - particularly the Initiative in Sustainable Energy (ISE) and the Institute for Biology, Engineering & Medicine (I-BEAM).

• We are focused on growing philanthropic support for research purposes, along with foundation and corporate funding. One of the main priorities for the BrownTogether campaign extension is continuing to raise endowed chairs, building on the over 125 chairs raised to-date in the campaign. The University is also fundraising for capital projects directly supporting research, such as the Integrated Life Sciences Building in the Jewelry District.

• We are also working on expanding our base of grant support from federal funding agencies, particularly through targeted funding mechanisms. For example, we are actively pursuing funds associated with the CHIPS and Science Act, which includes a $280 billion federal appropriation to fund initiatives nationwide, with $81 billion for semiconductor research over five years. 

Looking ahead, we plan to engage a consulting firm to help us develop large grant submissions like those for the CHIPS and Science Act and potential climate research-related grants.

Grants and contracts from nonprofit foundations are a critical source of research funding, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. We will invest in partnerships with foundations in the months and years ahead in order to procure more foundation funding for research.

Engaging the Brown community

The foundational steps we are taking now will help us build a trajectory of progress that will gather momentum over time. As we continue to move forward and reach new milestones, we are committed to sharing updates on our progress and regularly engaging the many campus communities that will play important roles in meeting our goals. Engagement opportunities will include in-person and digital forums where faculty and staff will be able to ask questions, give feedback on progress to-date, and share suggestions. 

This is only the beginning. And I am confident that the partnerships and groups of stakeholders we are bringing together across campus will position us well for the work ahead. The Brown community has proved time and again that, working together, we accomplish great things.

Sincerely, 
 

Lawrence E. Larson

Interim Provost