Members—

Charges—

Standing Charges

1. Monitor the administration of the General Research Fund (GRF) and make recommendations, as needed, to ensure its effectiveness and appropriate utilization.
2. FY2023: The Committee normally conducts a three-year review of the GRF, which would have been fall of 2021. For Fall 2022, the committee will review and make any revisions for FY2024 and FY2025, no later than October 31, 2022.  The next three year review will then take place Fall of 2025, for  3-year reallocations.  Note that the revisions must be completed and sent to Research no later than October 31, 2025 for FY2026, 2027 and 2028.
   
   The FSRC should pay particular attention to the entities’ different eligibility requirements for the competition (some entities accept applications from tenured or tenure-track faculty only while at least one other entity accepts applications from lecturers) in determining the degree to which entities are making effective use of the GRF.

Specific Charges

1. Explore ways to assess the effects on KU research and scholarship on budget cuts and budget models.
2. The committee should discuss the following issues and make recommendations:
   1. The amount of funding that KU allocates to the GRF is decreasing, which is concerning, given the expectations of high research productivity. In addition, the budget has undergone two cuts since 2019. Explore a comparison of KU’s internal research funding (possibly including strategic initiatives, Research Rising, and other special funding opportunities, KU Endowment funding) to peer universities.
   2. Explore how the reduction of tenure track faculty lines is impacting overall KU faculty productivity.
   3. Investigate the process by which KU solicits funding from KU Endowment to support the research mission of faculty. The Endowment’s policy is to let donors choose how and to whom they will donate funds. How can faculty members make a proposal to the Endowment to seek funding? It appears to be a top-down process, with administrators making decisions with their development officers on who to approach, and for which projects.  This process seems needlessly obscure and likely also does not attend to gender and racial equity and diversity in the funding of projects.
3. Explore ways to revitalize the intellectual climate and culture at KU, focusing in particular on the structural barriers to creativity and innovation at KU: what can be done to overcome these barriers?

Final Reports and Outcomes—