The deadlines for the second wave of internal seed funding through Chancellor Carlos Santiago’s Research Growth Initiative were announced last week.

The program aims to expand the university’s research enterprise by investing in proposals by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty and staff. It is designed to put more researchers into the process of research and help enable all disciplines, including humanities and the arts, to gain access to research funding.

The initiative allows those faculty and staff members to apply for initial funding, which is awarded by the university.

The proposals are supposed to be self-sustaining, meaning that after a defined period of time, the proposals would find external funding sources and continue the research.

“The RGI has generated an unprecedented burst of entrepreneurial creativity on campus,” said Chancellor Carlos Santiago at his Plenary Address in January.

The proposal deadline for the second wave of the initiative is 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 16.

“Last year I thought we’d get about half as many as we got,” said Mark Harris, associate dean for Research in Graduate School. “I’m hoping that we get two to three hundred proposals.”

The changes taking place for the second wave of funding include: a change to the percentage of faculty salary that corresponds with course release, an applicant may be the lead person on no more than two proposals, and the application process deadline was moved up to mid-October to get the process completed by mid-March so that teaching schedules for next year can be worked out better, Harris said.

“I’m hoping that we can use this kind of timeline because it works better for the academic calendar and allows for better instructional activities,” Harris said.

Department chairs asked to have more time to work out teaching schedules, he said.

Although there were more than 300 proposals during the first round of funding, only 50 were chosen to receive funding. Many faculty and staff will seek funding again this year.

“The hope is that some of the review comments would help them improve their proposals,” Harris said. “There’ll be a large number of applicants from last year who want to submit this year.”

The process of using outside reviewers will remain the same, he said.

“An outside set of reviewers is real valuable because it’s a similar process of what outside proposals go through,” he said. “It’s an unbiased perspective on what’s really good.”

The outside reviewers will submit recommendations to Santiago, Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Rita Cheng and Harris, who will make the ultimate decision on funding.

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