The Office of Educational Research (OER) supports and develops research, training, and service activities for faculty and doctoral students as follows:
1. Identify and disseminate potential funding sources.
- Search for and disseminate relevant funding opportunities through OER’S weekly Funding and Award Opportunities
- Send targeted emails to faculty with select funding opportunities aligning with their research goals.
- Serve as liaison with external funding agencies.
- Serve as liaison with the COE Office of Development and Alumni Affairs, UF Foundation, and UF Office of Research.
- Facilitate internal review for applicable limited funding opportunities.
- Assist faculty to acquire seed funds for external funding such as College Research Incentive Fund (CRIF) and Research Opportunity Fund (ROF).
2. Build collaborative research teams.
- Assist in development of cross-departmental and cross-university collaborative teams.
- Establish strategic partnerships.
- Maintain web-based COE research profiles.
3. Support development of proposals from start to finish.
- Provide support for faculty to seek professional (grant-writing) consultants.
- When possible, provide samples of successful proposals.
- Provide consultation to help guide principal investigators (PIs) through the proposal submission process.
- Review requests for proposals (RFPs) to assist with funding agency requirements.
- Present suggestions for project design.
- Develop budgets.
- Coordinate sub-contract processes.
- Assess cost-sharing requests.
- Provide feedback on proposal drafts when sufficient time is allotted by PI.
- Prepare supplemental materials and boilerplate text.
- Provide editing, proofreading, and formatting services.
4. Facilitate submission processes for proposals.
- Perform UFIRST uploads.
- Assure funding agency forms are completed accurately.
- Serve as liaison with various university offices (e.g., Division of Sponsored Programs, Contracts and Grants, Graduate School, Institutional Review Board, Provost’s Office).
5. Provide faculty professional development opportunities.
- Provide training and resources in areas such as research design, quantitative and qualitative analyses, and project management.
- Provide support for faculty to participate in external PD opportunities.
- Assist faculty in meeting with funding agencies.
- Arrange for mentors to support grant-writing efforts.
- Meet with new faculty to support their efforts to pursue funding.
6. Manage the faculty award process.
- Disseminate relevant award opportunities through the weekly Funding and Award Opportunities
- Provide support for faculty to complete award applications.
- Showcase faculty productivity such as UF Research Foundation (UFRF).
- Work collaboratively with Faculty Policy Council (FPC) committees to facilitate award review processes.
- Provide support for faculty to complete award applications.
7. Promote research communications.
- Produce monthly Research Bulletin newsletter, including a list of submitted and funded projects, research events, and news of interest.
- Compile OER Annual Report, outlining data on externally funded projects and grant activities in the COE.
- Produce weekly Funding and Award Opportunities newsletter, summarizing relevant funding and award opportunities.
- Sponsor Brown Bag Series research events.
- Plan speaker series involving COE’s endowed professors.