 Fueling the CAHNRS research enterprise
I want to kick off the fall semester with a few words about the quality of the CAHNRS research enterprise, and I am pleased to report that the 2015 fiscal year was outstanding. CAHNRS faculty generated the second highest amount of extramural research funding ever.
We had over 910 publications in peer-reviewed journals from our annual review data collected from 2014. Your research has had important impacts in discovery and improvement for fundamental plant and animal sciences, natural resources, sustainable agricultural practices from production and breeding to food safety and processing, human behavior and development through prevention science, and economic, social and policy dimensions of information for community development.
Faculty funding efforts pay off
Extramural funding is the fuel that drives the research enterprise in CAHNRS. The CAHNRS mission of promoting research beneficial to the citizens of Washington has resulted in significant research and development funding. Two-thirds of the funding that flows through the CAHNRS Office of Research is extramural funding generated by faculty. In fiscal year 2015, this totaled over $82 million dollars for the academic, research and extension areas of CAHNRS combined. Of this total, research faculty brought in nearly $56 million, one third more than the previous year, making FY2015 the second most productive year on record for CAHNRS. The figure below shows how this funding breaks down.
Although the majority of federal awards come from USDA, CAHNRS faculty also receive funding from NSF, NIH, DOE, DOD, DOI and US-AID. Our goal is to not only continue the high level of success with USDA, but to also increase the portfolio of awards from other agencies and industry in the future.
Each year the USDA publishes rankings of NIFA competitive funding by congressional district. For three of the last four years, Washington’s 5th Congressional District (eastern Washington) ranked among the top five in the country. It’s very important to point out that while we were in the top five in the nation for competitive funding, we weren’t even among the top ten for USDA Capacity Grants (also known as formula funds: HATCH and McIntire-Stennis). This is but one metric that demonstrates our ability to leverage capacity funds.
Publications are key
As we look to the future we will need to be more strategic, more collaborative and more visible – both as administrators in considering how resources are allocated and as scientists in conducting research. To remain competitive in today’s funding environment, it is imperative to not only be awarded grants, but also to complete studies and publish the results within 12 months of the study’s completion. It is important to publish impactful work.
Your discoveries and innovations should be in high-profile publications that are widely cited while mission oriented findings should be in relevant journals, bulletins, and websites that are readily accessible to the intended user. I encourage you to visit and bookmark the Weekly Published Research website, which lists current research published by CAHNRS faculty.
We must work together to create a research environment that fosters excellence, and to ensure that the WSU CAHNRS research enterprise is among the top five in the nation on a yearly basis.
In future posts, I will discuss the developing research agenda for organic agriculture, activities that engage faculty to enhance the research enterprise through the newly appointed Faculty Research Advisory Council, and new efforts to aid faculty in their efforts to commercialize new discoveries.
As always, I welcome your input and ideas. Please leave comments for this post on the Research Conversations page.
Sincerely,
Jim
James W. Moyer
CAHNRS Associate Dean for Research
Director, Agricultural Research Center
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