Impediments to Faculty Involvement in Grant Related Activities: A Case Study
Year: 1990
Type: article
Abstract: Impediments to Faculty Involvement in Grant-Related Activities: A Case Study Abstract Opportunities for funded research serve as a major incentive for scholarly productivity among college and university faculty members. Yet, considering the number of activities which compete for faculty members' time, grant-related activities are frequently neglected. The present study sought to determine some of the barriers that impede faculty members' involvement in grant activities. Data were collected via structured interviews with selected college of education faculty members at the University of New Orleans during the 1988-1989 academic year. Three major impediments to funded research activities were identified--lack of procedural information, lack of information about funding sources, and lack of a clearly-defined system of rewards for those who obtain external funding. Other impediments were also identified. Based upon these findings, a number of recommendations are offered for improving faculty involvement in grant-related activities. The idea of the university faculty member's role including both and research had its roots in the sixteenth century German university model, [1] and by the late nineteenth century, research had begun to emerge as an integral part of the American university's mission. [2] The role of research has become increasingly important during the second half of the twentieth century, to the extent that today's universities judge themselves, and are judged by others, on the basis of their research productivity. [3] The Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education predicted in 1980 that higher education would experience in the last two decades of the twentieth century a new academic revolution characterized by a decrease in funding coupled with an increase in student enrollment. [4] Interestingly, it was predicted during that same time that academia would fail to attract new, young, research-oriented faculty and would, in fact, experience a loss of four percent of its faculty per year. [5] Hence, in the face of such problems, the role of funded research in American universities is projected to become increasingly important, even though there will be fewer faculty members qualified to do such research. In light of these facts, one speech communication scholar concluded that increased attention to extramural [financial] support for our scholarship is necessary, if not sufficient, for communication to prosper in the immediate future. [6] Obviously, the future prosperity of other disciplines hangs in the balance as well. Interestingly, even teaching universities are feeling the pressure to become more research-oriented. [7,8,9] Research has become an important part of academic reality in two-year institutions as well. [10] Research has become an important source of income, with institutions of the 1980s receiving approximately 13 percent of their revenues from grants and contracts. [11] In fact, many faculty members are finding themselves in an environment where they are expected to conduct research and to actively pursue external fundings for their research activities. [3] Unfortunately, many faculty members have received little or no training in grantsmanship. [12] Also, many feel strong tensions between their obligations as teachers and as researchers. [1,6,13] Others refrain from pursuing grants because they feel the process is too risky and results in too few if any financial or intrinsic rewards. [14] Consequently, many institutions are now initiating programs to enhance research capabilities and to increase faculty involvement in pursuing sponsored funding. [8] In developing instrumentation to measure perceptions of what is important in the grantsmanship process, Cook and Loadman found there were two subsets of their inventory items that faculty experienced in grantsmanship activities regarded, respectively, as truths and myths associated with the grants process. …
Authors: Larry G. Daniel, Irene Gallaher
Language: English
Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W186188727