Awards were announced Thursday, June 2, 2022. View the Awards Announcement.
Georgia State is proud to launch a transformational new Research Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) challenge that will marshal the unique strengths of our research community to address complex problems through interdisciplinary collaboration. This initiative aims to foster an innovative research ecosystem that will mobilize faculty across units around high-impact foci and translate research discovery into outcomes that will elevate Georgia State to national and global prominence.
Purpose
The RISE initiative will provide resources for five interdisciplinary teams of faculty to develop transformative research at the university. Teams that receive these awards will take bold new approaches to our most pressing societal challenges. Their signature research themes will culminate in large-scale impacts within the university and beyond through partnerships with government agencies, private industry, foundations/nonprofits or philanthropic sponsors. This challenge will cultivate the next generation of innovative thought leaders among our faculty, staff and students and truly make Georgia State RISE!
The goals of the initiative are to:
- Identify five interdisciplinary research areas in which Georgia State is uniquely positioned to establish itself as a national/international leader.
- Stimulate the formation of effective and productive research teams addressing the most pressing challenges facing society.
- Elevate the university’s visibility in these interdisciplinary research foci and other areas of unique strength.
- Provide invigorating new opportunities for faculty, staff and students.
- Facilitate large-scale awards (federal, state, foundation/non-profits, industry, etc.) and/or sustainable partnerships.
Approach
RISE teams will receive one-time seed funding of up to $500,000 over the course of one year. These resources may only be used to support non-recurring costs. Successful teams will be responsive to the evaluation criteria below.
Evaluation Criteria
In reviewing applications, the following general criteria will be used for evaluation and selection:
- Far-reaching impact: How will outcomes benefit our local community, state, nation and the world?
- Leverage of current faculty strength and leadership: How are existing scholarly expertise and faculty activity being fully leveraged by the team?
- Disciplinary diversity: How will the focus area take advantage of exceptional strengths across diverse colleges/schools/departments/centers/units?
- Elevation of Georgia State and its reputation: How will this topic advance Georgia State’s scholarly leadership and national/global status?
- Interconnection with education: How will this research engage students, postdoctoral researchers and other trainees?
- Engagement with external entities: How will the project engage constituencies outside of Georgia State to augment impact through partnership?
- Sustainability: How will successful projects be sustained over time by resources internal and external to Georgia State?
- Innovation: What makes the focus area distinctive at Georgia State relative to other institutions?
- Goals and milestones: What are the metrics of success and in what timeframe?
It is fully appreciated that these criteria are not all-encompassing, that individual criteria may not be relevant to all proposals and that strength in certain areas may compensate for weakness in others.
Frequently Asked Questions
RISE Challenge
Funds will be made available for one year between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023. The proposal budget should be developed to be spent during this period.
You can use any standard format to outline your budget. All budgets must include a written budget justification.
Any reasonable costs can be included with the following guidance:
- No faculty lines may be included. Summer salary, but not academic year salary, may be included for existing faculty.
- New hires, postdocs, and graduate students paid from the award must be moved to another source of funding after the award budget period ends. All salaries and stipends must be justified in the budget for the proposed project and fringe should be included with salaries for staff paid from the budget.
- Course releases are allowed with approval from the appropriate academic chair; Payments to cover replacement instructors for course releases should only be for the amount it will cost to pay the replacement instructor and not a set percent as with external grant proposals.
- No iindirect costs should be included in this internal award budget.
That will be decided on a case-by-case basis and will depend largely on the progress made towards the primary goals of the awarded project. It is important keep in mind that this is ONE TIME MONEY and there will be no additional funds through this mechanism to sustain the project elements; however, it is possible that funds may be provided through other mechanisms for successful RISE projects.
All proposals should be submitted in the Internal Grants Portal (https://internalgrants.gsu.edu/). Log in using your campusID and password. Select “Create New Submission” and choose “RISE Initiative” from the drop-down in the pop-up window. The person responsible for submitting the proposal (and who will act as the primary contact PI) should complete the cover page of information, attach the final .pdf file (all documents must be merged into a single PDF), and enter everyone who needs to sign off on the proposal into separate workflow lines. People in the workflow should only include Key Personnel (equivalent to co-I or co-PI on a grant) and the relevant college deans. Once everything on the cover page is completed, including the workflow, click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.
The Internal Grants Portal includes a workflow that allows the person submitting the proposal to add as many workflow lines as needed. Once submitted, an email goes to each of those people who can review and approve the proposal in that system. All approvers listed in the workflow will have 48 hours after the proposal deadline to submit their approvals in the Internal Grants Portal. If they have issues, they may contact the Office of Research Development ([email protected]) for assistance.
RISE projects should be a team effort as they should seek to be transformative in a manner that requires the approach of a multi-faceted team of investigators. There is no requirement for the number of investigators or entities to include in the proposal, but the team should be poised to do transformative research. Teams can be comprised of existing collaborators or collaborators that are new to working together, but the ability to work together effectively to do transformative research must be clearly conveyed in the proposal.
The RISE initiative is primarily for seeding research areas where Georgia State is poised to move to the "next level" and to engage in transformative research that will position Georgia State on the national/international stage in that area. These may be existing research areas or new research areas.
It is expected that RISE proposals will be led by faculty and experienced staff researchers who have the ability to manage these large-scale projects, but additional co-leaders or team leaders within the project may be anyone with the appropriate expertise and abilities.
External collaborators can be included on a RISE proposal; however, sub-awards to external entities are not allowed. External collaborators or service providers may be included as consultants and paid accordingly. Moreover, there is no requirement for matching funds from external entities, but there will be additional scrutiny if a proposal budgets a lot of funds to an external entity.
The Office of the VPRED will be working with our compliance offices to do everything we can to facilitate quick approvals for RISE awards.
No, references are not counted in the 5-page narrative limit, but references can be included as an appendix.