Rationale:
There is growing recognition of the complex environment pre-tenured faculty must navigate in order to succeed with their federal grant applications. The college is well positioned to be able to provide mentorship for day-to-day aspects of conducting research (ie filing institutional review board documents, working with students etc). However, we are not in a position of depth to provide content expertise and guidance to pre-tenure faculty’s on the, rigor, impact, experimental design, and if the overarching goals and hypothesis are sufficient to be competitive with federal grants. The VROOM program was developed to address this critical gap and help CHS scientists be successful with their federal grant applications.
Who may apply:
All pre-tenured regular and research title faculty that have an expectation to submit grants as a principal investigator.
How the program works:
- The pre-tenured faculty member identifies another scientist with content expertise who is federally funded, not on a study section they would be applying too, and is not their former post-doc or doctoral mentor.
- They will then consult with their department chair and the ADR on the rationale and appropriateness of the choice.
- The ADR will contact the potential mentor, describe the program and the ask. The pre-tenured faculty member will supply the ADR with their CV and a few statements to be used in the email on why we would like to work with this particular person.
- After the mentor agrees, there will be a kick off meeting with the ADR, pre-tenured faculty, department chair, and the mentor.
- The mentor will be asked to meet with the pre-tenured faculty member quarterly, and provide them feedback on the grants they are developing, the questions they are asking, their study and grant submission timelines. They will also review aims pages and other parts of the grant upon request.
- The mentor, pre-tenured faculty, and department chair will meet yearly to discuss the faculty members progress, set goals for the upcoming years and discuss any obstacles or roadblocks they encountered over the past year. The mentor will be asked after each quarterly meeting to email the ADR that they met and any concerns or highlights that they noticed from the meeting.
- The faculty member is able to retain this service for the first 5 years of their pre-tenure clock. Year to year renewal is contingent upon meeting with their mentor, the mentors active participation, and review of the progress from the prior year.
- Mentors will be provided a year $2000 stipend upon the completion of the yearly meeting.