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Week of 15 January 1999 Vol. II, No. 19 Feature Article In current scramble for research funds, BU official takes little for granted By Hope Green As a geologist, Carol Simpson analyzes the shifting patterns of mountain ranges and continental plates. As BU's associate provost for research and graduate education, she will help faculty navigate the shifting economic terrain in their quest for federal grant awards. Carol Simpson, earth sciences chairman and new associate provost. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky The CAS professor and chair of the department of earth sciences assumed her new responsibilities January 1. The newly created position, Simpson says, will enhance the University's efforts to compete for research grants, develop ideas that lead to patents, and recruit high-caliber faculty and graduate students. At present she is serving on a half-time basis, but eventually the position will become a full-time appointment. Before she joined CAS in 1995, Simpson was an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, and during that time directed the National Science Foundation's Tectonics Program for five years. Her experience in that grant-making institution has served her well in helping to revitalize BU's earth sciences department. When the NSF or other national funding agencies put out a call for research proposals, she says, "I have an idea of what they really want" in a grant application. Such insider's perspective will be useful, Simpson notes, in a climate of heightened competition for research dollars. "Congress has not been putting as much money into pure research as it had in the past," she says. "The emphasis has been more toward applied research. That means that within the academic setting, people who are trying to get funded for basic research are at somewhat of a disadvantage." At the same time, the volume of postdoctoral work at universities across the country is on the rise, "so more qualified people are applying for grants, and there's that much less money to go around." Junior faculty members need the most help, says Simpson, because they tend to lack established relationships with funding organizations. At BU, one strategy to boost research productivity is the new Provost's Innovation Fund, which will help faculty to conduct research that is required in developing patentable ideas. "You need to demonstrate that a project is viable before you approach a funding agency or a corporation," explains Simpson, who will administer the fund. A second way to capture the attention of grant-makers, Simpson says, is to encourage interdisciplinary research. Collaborations already occur across diverse academic departments at BU, she explains, but not on a large scale. "There are lots of areas in which we can have many people come together from different fields and understand one another's language, and that is very powerful. A great way to make a leap forward in any science is to bring in ideas from the outside." Another of Simpson's priorities, she says, is to enhance the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, established in the fall of 1997. UROP sponsors workshops and symposia for students who collaborate on research with faculty members and defrays the cost of their projects. In addition, Simpson will work with deans and program directors on graduate school marketing campaigns, especially those conducted using the Internet and direct mail. In many instances a prospective student chooses BU simply to work with a well-known professor, she says, but the graduate schools need to more aggressively market the intrinsic value of their entire programs.