Friday @ the Center
October 16, 2009
Faculty Workshop: New Grant Search Tool
SPU has purchased a nifty new web-based tool to locate grant opportunities in the arts, sciences, humanities, languages, theology, social sciences, and other areas. The Community of Sciences (COS) allows you to create a personal account, conduct targeted searches for funding sources, save your search profile, and receive a weekly email announcing newly published RFPs matching your profile. A faculty workshop on conducting searches and setting up a profile will be held on Wed, Oct. 21, in the Falcon Lounge, from 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Lunch will be provided, and you are invited to bring your laptop. Please RSVP to Anna Miller by the end of today (Oct. 16) if you plan to attend. Before the workshop, you are encouraged to create a user ID and log in to COS (from any SPU campus computer) to familiarize yourself with the program.
Listening: The Journey Toward Discernment
If you know any SPU juniors in the midst of struggling to find a sense of calling and vocation, please nominate them to be invited to “Listening: The Journey Toward Discernment,” a FREE in-city ‘retreat’ on Saturday, Nov. 21, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Fremont Abbey. Activities will include an alumni panel, speakers from the School of Theology, lunch, and lots of interactive exercises. Students nominated by faculty will be invited to attend, with applications becoming open to the entire junior class if additional spaces are available. This event is sponsored by the School of Theology and the Center for Career and Calling, and funded by the Center’s SERVE project. Contact Jeff Keuss to submit a nomination.
Two New Grant Policies
The growing number of federal grants that SPU faculty have been awarded in the past few years has necessitated the adoption of several policies mandated by our friendly U.S. government. We are asked annually to certify that we have such policies publicly available. For many complicated legal reasons, we also need to be sure that all grant applicants have seen and reviewed these policies, so such a review will become part of our internal grant application process. The two new policies address Conflict of Interes and Academic Misconduct in Research and Creative Activity. In the future, all applicants for federal grants will need either to indicate that they have no conflict of interest or to declare a possible conflict of interest with respect to their research. The Academic Misconduct policy is designed to meet the requirements of the federal Office of Research Integrity but also to cover additional cases of misconduct, including both research and creative activity. The Dean's Cabinet, the Faculty Affairs Committee, and Margaret Diddams, on behalf of IRB, have reviewed both policies, which are now available on the Center’s website.
Research Notes: My Favorite Ig
In the midst of Nobel Prize season, the science-humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research awards annual Ig Nobel Prizes for “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” While the first prize this year went to a scintillating study on encounters between beer bottles and human skulls, my favorite Ig is the award in veterinary medicine for research “showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.” Funny, how the same principle works in teaching.
Cheers,
Susan Susan VanZanten |
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