Mizzou Advantage awards grants to faculty
More than $900,000 in grants have been awarded for networking and research.
Published May 7, 2010
Provost Brian Foster announced Tuesday that $900,000 in grants to MU faculty have been awarded under the Mizzou Advantage program. The program, created to increase MU's national visibility, is working to forge connections between faculty members and collaborators both on and off campus.
The Mizzou Advantage program began in 2006 with the Strategic Advantages Task Force, summoned to identify five of the university's most competitive advantages. By focusing on these five initiatives, Mizzou Advantage can increase the stature and impact of MU's educational programs in those five areas.
"The idea was to identify MU's competitive advantages that are uniquely strong and would position MU such that other major universities would be unable to compete successfully," the Mizzou Advantage stated.
According to the plan, the five Mizzou Advantages are One Health, One Medicine, Food for the Future, New Media, Sustainable Energy and Understanding and Managing Disruptive and Transformational Technologies.
The grants approved Tuesday will give the program a foundation, Foster said.
"These are grants to feed the process," Foster said. "They are going to tie together the network in place and create more productive kinds of collaboration."
According to an MU news release, the grant is divided into two types of grants, network proposals and fellow proposals. The money awarded to MU faculty is intended to help create new growth and relationships in each of the five initiative areas. Network proposals involve activities that help build relationships, create new collaborations and deepen MU's presence in each of the five areas.
Fellow proposals are grants that will seed substantive education, research and service as well as enhance MU's existing prominences in the five initiative areas.
"It is important to emphasize that the two request for proposals are complementary, and both are essential foundations for the success of the Mizzou Advantage," the request for proposals stated.
According to the news release, 11 network proposals and 15 fellow proposals were awarded this year representing more than 50 departments and emphasis areas across MU.
Foster discussed the mission of the program as one that will build upon itself over time and promote collaboration between faculty, corporate partners and other organizations on and off campus.
"The question is how do we bring them together to collaborate in a new productive way?" Foster said. "You'd be surprised how many people we bring in to a room that are working on very similar projects and have never even heard of one another."
Over the next several years, the program will expand and MU will no longer need to provide grants, Foster said. With the help of the grants being awarded now, the programs involved will be more competitive to receive grants and contracts as well as gaining faculty recognition.