The Office of Research Development (ORD) provides resources, services, and training to increase faculty competitiveness in obtaining extramural funding, increase scholarly recognition for faculty, catalyze interdisciplinary collaborations, and advance research and creative activities at Syracuse University.
Services We Offer
Proposal Development
The specific support for any given submission is tailored to faculty needs, the size and complexity of the proposal, and ORD team capacity at that time. Generally, the earlier a faculty member requests support, the more supports ORD can provide, which may include:
- Solicitation analysis: identify key funder goals and alignment with faculty research interests
- Solicitation-specific competitive analysis: review prior or similar solicitations, analyze previous award information, and identify characteristics of winning proposals
- Planning documents: provide checklists and timelines tailored to the solicitation
- Reference documents: provide successful proposal samples and templates for standard technical and non-technical proposal components, such as team collaboration and management plans, Broader Impacts, workforce development plans, data management and sharing plans, postdoc mentoring plans, biosketches, among others
- Proposal review: provide detailed feedback on proposal narratives, including responsiveness, persuasiveness, structure, clarity, and grantsmanship. Includes annotated comments, suggestions, and substantive edits. If time allows, may review multiple drafts.
- Supplementary document review: provide feedback on non-technical components for consistency, accuracy, and clarity
- External review: arrange Pink Team, Red Team, or other external review(s) of near-final draft proposals
Connecting Research Teams
ORD plays a pivotal role in catalyzing interdisciplinary collaborations across campus, multiplying the impact of individual researchers in pursuing solutions to the complex challenges of today’s world. This includes:
- Fostering connections on campus: identify and facilitate collaborations with faculty across other departments, schools, and colleges
- Fostering connections off campus: identify and facilitate potential partnerships with institutions, community organizations, and industry
- Navigating the research enterprise: help faculty connect to the right University offices and services to support their project
Faculty Development
ORD offers diverse capacity-building programming to faculty to serve a wide range of scholars across disciplines. This includes:
- NSF CAREER Series: An annual series open to all tenure-track assistant professors applying for CAREER awards
- NIH R-Series Cohort: A competitive cohort series for faculty who have not yet been successful in winning an R-series award
- Fellowship Proposal Writing Circle: An annual series open to all faculty developing fellowship proposals in the arts and humanities
- Give and Get Proposal Feedback Group: A biennial series to facilitate peer-to-peer mentoring open to all faculty developing fellowship proposals in the arts and humanities
Finding Funding
ORD helps faculty plan scholarly funding trajectories and identify the funding opportunities they need to succeed. This includes:
- Strategic consultation: In one-on-one and small group settings, partner with faculty to develop three- and five-year funding plans
- Funder assessment and competitive intelligence: Identify funder priorities, funder trends, and characteristics of successful awardees
- Identifying funding resources: Recommend appropriate database searches and email newsletters.
- Funding dissemination: Track and distribute relevant funding opportunities to faculty across campus
Internal Funding
ORD administers much of the internal funding which is competitively solicited by the Office of Research. These programs include:
- Faculty Creative Activities and Research (FCAR): This program provides up to $5,000 for one-year projects in order to support new research and creative endeavors and increase high-quality scholarly output by faculty.
- Team Building for Large, Collaborative Grants: This internal award program aims to develop and support collaborative teams interested in pursuing large, multi-investigator, center-level external funding for research that requires a team-science approach.
- Faculty Bridge Funding Program: The purpose of the Bridge Funding Program is to provide interim resources to Syracuse University faculty to ensure the continuation of research efforts that have demonstrated a high likelihood of securing federal funding. Bridge Funding is not intended to seed-fund new research projects, to support new directions in research, or to restart research programs that have not received external funding for more than three years.