Nevada's Systemic Improvement Plan

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93-53227 Bishop Nevada's Systemic Improvement Plan The University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN) proposes systemic improvement (SI) activities that will allow the university research institutions to be successful in nationally competitive research grant programs. These activities and plans focus around several themes that are remaining barriers to research: space and facilities; equipment; organizational structure; personnel (faculty, students, staff); and visibility. Nevada's SI plan is multi-level in terms of its organization. SI activities will be and are taking place at the state level, at the cluster level, and at the level of individual faculty. At the statewide level, activities have been designed to provide permanent improvements in the research structure and organization of the UCCSN. The three research institutions, DRI, UNLV and UNR, have created and filled positions for Vice President for Research (VPR). The VPRs are working together to reorganize the university system infrastructure in ways that foster and encourage research activities. The State EPSCoR Committee is being reorganized, moving from governance to outreach. Communication between state government, business and the university is being facilitated and enhanced by the formation of a not-for-profit public-private partnership called Nevada Industry, Science, Engineering and Technology, Inc. At the research cluster level, SI activities will fund equipment for important research facilities, and allow the hiring of new faculty, postdocs and graduate students for the cluster programs. Three research clusters have been armed around several research themes: bridge engineering, chemical physics and plant responses to rising CO2 and temperature (plant biology). These clusters have been chosen because they represent the three groups for which a relatively small amount of SI will provide a very large benefit. Two important research facilities are currently near completion: the Brid ge Engineering Laboratory and the Great Basin Environmental Research Laboratory (GBERL). In both cases, equipment requested in this proposal will essentially complete the laboratories. When the GBERL is complete, it will be one of the best plant growth facilities in the world, capable of doing, for the first time, full plant-canopy gas exchange experiments under precisely controlled conditions. The bridge engineering laboratory will be one of the ten or twenty best large scale structure labs in the country. At the level of individual faculty, SI activities will be aimed at three areas: departmental/ programmatic review, proposal development enhancement and individual research enhancement. These activities will be coordinated and/or conducted by the new Director of the Nevada EPSCoR program. The review process will be directed towards the identification and preparation of new research groups that are nearly ready for participation in EPSCoR. Proposal development enhancement activities will improve the ability of all faculty to write a successful research proposal. Because of isolation and a lack of mentoring by senior faculty, many faculty who are creative and have good research ideas have not learned the skills that are necessary to write a successful research proposal. An expected benefit of this activity is that some faculty should be able to leapfrog past the EPSCoR process, directly to being nationally competitive. The third activity at the individual level will be to develop a systemwide individual research enhancement program. This program will be a competitive small grant program operated by the new EPSCoR Director, aimed at providing funding for creative, new ideas that need maturing before being ready for nationally competitive grant programs. Human resource development is an important component to Nevada's SI plan. We have included a human resource development cluster: "Women in Science and Engineering: Greater Participation and Higher Productivity." The purpose of this cluster is to improve the ability of women scientists and engineers to acquire nationally competitive grants, and to encourage high school and undergraduate women to choose careers in science and engineering. By developing a systemic improvement plan that has activities at all levels, maximum participation and benefit for all research-oriented faculty is assured. Focused plans to enhance certain research activities have been chosen to maximize EPSCoR resources and to assure graduation of the three research clusters to national prominence.