Facts for UR Proposals and Undergraduate Impact Statement

The following information is provided to assist University of Richmond faculty and administrators in proposal preparation. Please contact the Office of Foundation and Government Grants before submitting any proposal; all applications for external funding must be submitted through this office.

Fringe Benefit Rates:
Full time, Academic Year: 28% of salary
Part Time employees, Summer faculty, Students: 8.5% of salary

Indirect Cost Rate (Facilities and Administrative Costs):
52% of salaries, wages and fringe benefits.
This is the University of Richmond's federally-negotiated indirect cost rate (Dept. of Health and Human Services, 7/1/99).

Federal ID#: 54-0505965

DUNS #: 05-691-5069

U.S. Congressional District: 7th

Virginia House District: 68th

Virginia Senate District: 12th

Institutional Authorized Representative: Jennifer M. Sauer, Controller

USE OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL SUBJECTS IN RESEARCH

Faculty or student investigators who engage in research at the University of Richmond must follow ethical guidelines established to insure compliance with federal standards for the protection of human and animal subjects. Research protocols involving such subjects must be reviewed by the appropriate institutional review board. Approval must be obtained before the research may begin. You must contact the Arts & Sciences Graduate School Office, Room 24, Boatwright Administrative Wing, or see oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/a&s/s_research/researchethical.html.

UNDERGRADUATE INSTITUTION IMPACT STATEMENT

(May be cut and pasted as an NSF-RUI IMPACT STATEMENT, or in other instances when narrative about the University is required.)

RUI Impact Statement -- University of Richmond

NOTE to PIs: Insert paragraphs about your department, your students (research, publications, presentations, grad school, etc). Please cut and paste as needed.

The University of Richmond, established in 1830, is one of America’s premier private, highly selective, independent liberal arts universities, with a rising national and international profile. An ambitious 10-year strategic plan, approved in 2000, provides a strong momentum for the University’s future, including a major Science Initiative. Richmond has a full-time enrollment of approximately 4,268 enrolled in the schools of arts and sciences, leadership studies, business, law, and continuing studies. This total includes 3,460 undergraduates, 755 masters and professional, and 53 unclassified students. Over 90% of the full-time undergraduates live on campus, more than half are involved in internships, 40% participate in study abroad programs, and two-thirds participate in community service. For eleven straight years, the University of Richmond was named the best master’s university in the South by US News and World Report. At the end of 2004, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching reclassified the University of Richmond from the Masters I category to the Baccalaureate Liberal Arts category. The US News and World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” issue for 2007 lists Richmond in the top tier of national liberal arts universities, and in the top 35 nationally for undergraduate research.. Richmond was selected for The Princeton Review’s 2007 “Best 361 Colleges” issue, and the Newsweek-Kaplan College Guide chose Richmond for its list of “America’s 331 Most Interesting Schools.” A Princeton Review publication, “The Best 282 Business Schools,” chose Richmond’s Robins School MBA program for inclusion, and the Business School is ranked in the top 25 by BusinessWeek. (See http://www.richmond.edu.)

Students

The full-time undergraduate population is approximately 3,000 (52% women, 48% men), with outstanding students from nearly every state and about 75 foreign countries. About 12% of the students are American students of color; about 5% are international. Out of 5,408 applications for fall 2006; 2,363 were accepted and 767 enrolled. The middle 50 percent of entering students had average SAT +scores in the 1180-1350 range, and more than one-half of the class who reported high school class rank were in the top 10 percent. Fourteen percent of the first year class students are domestic students of color, and 11 percent are first-generation college students.

The University has need-blind admissions and is committed to meeting 100% of the demonstrated need of every student who enrolls. About 65% of our students receive some amount of assistance, when we consider all sources and types of assistance. For Virginia students, the University is committed to providing grants for tuition, room and board for families with incomes under $40,000 who qualify for aid. For 2006-07, 21 Virginia students are enrolled under this program. In addition, there are a number of merit based scholarships for undergraduates that benefit hundreds of students, with 50 significant scholarships for full tuition awarded annually under the Richmond Scholars program. In addition there are one-half and partial tuition scholarships, including more than 250 endowed funds.

Richmond is a coordinate residential college, providing men and women students separate residences and opportunities for leadership in student government. About 220 student organizations, including 33 honor societies (among them ODK since 1921 and Phi Beta Kappa since 1928) offer opportunities for interaction, leadership and community involvement. The University’s location in the state capital and just 100 miles from Washington, DC provides close proximity to state and national governments as well as a wealth of financial, cultural and civic organizations, insuring students a variety of internship and service-learning opportunities and access to major research centers.

Faculty and Research

The University’s small size and diversity of programs enable and encourage inter-school and interdisciplinary projects with a wealth of opportunities for student-faculty interactions. Undergraduate students routinely engage in research alongside their professors, publishing and presenting results. There are 326 full-time faculty members at all ranks, 244 at the assistant level or above, of whom 98.4% hold the Ph.D. or the equivalent terminal degree in their field. About one-third of the faculty is females and minorities. The student-faculty ratio is 9.4 to 1; all classes are taught by faculty, not graduate assistants.

Faculty members routinely integrate their research into teaching and engage students as research assistants, collaborators, co-authors and co-presenters at national conferences. Each year, Richmond faculty members make invaluable contributions to society through their research, and have attracted more than $9.6 million in research grants over the past five years, in addition to more than $13.9 million in grants for other non-research projects. Among the topics studied by faculty are tumor growth and cancer treatment, neuroanatomy and the affects of pregnancy on behavior and learning, nuclear physics, specification of lymphatic heart myoblasts, interactions in oligomeric proteins, Biologically enhanced metallic nanoparticles, morphology of the frog genus Leptodactylu;, strategic entrepreneurship; the Constitution and the Moral Foundations of Originalism; Buddhist goddesses of India, Tibet and Nepal; and an array of other topics.

The University of Richmond is a recipient of a 2004 Undergraduate Science Education Program grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The university is using the funds for hiring additional faculty and developing new courses at the cutting edge of biology and related sciences, especially in bioinformatics and mathematics. A challenge grant from the Kresge Foundation in 2004 supports scientific instrumentation. Research and equipment grants also have been provided by the National Science Foundation; National Institutes of Health; National Security Agency; National Endowment for the Humanities; U.S. Departments of Energy, Education, and Defense; National Park Service; CIES-Fulbright; American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund; Research Corporation; Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation; Jeffress Memorial Trust; Jessie Ball duPont Fund; Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management; Associated Colleges of the South; Virginia Foundation for the Humanities; and other local and national foundations, corporations and government agencies.

Strategic Plan and the Sciences

The University completed a campus-wide strategic planning process in 2000. The resulting strategy is to combine at Richmond the best that higher education has to offer tomorrow’s leaders: a synthesis of teaching and research, knowledge transmission and knowledge creation, intellectual growth and character development, liberal arts and professional education. The Science Initiative is the highest priority in the strategic plan, and includes a revision of the curriculum and comprehensive upgrade of the science facilities. The Science Initiative includes more than $60 million in program enhancements and a $35 million renovation of the Gottwald Center for the Sciences. Renovations begun in 2003 were completed in spring 2006. The results provide increased opportunities for faculty-student research; addition of up to 18 new science faculty, bringing the total to 44; greater emphasis on interdisciplinary studies such as new majors in biochemistry and molecular biology and a 3-2 engineering program; state-of-the-art instrumentation in every laboratory; and the development of innovative science experiences for non-science majors. We have developed working relationships for faculty and students to participate in research at such sites as the Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, Jefferson National Accelerator Lab in Newport News, VA.

The University is committed to encouraging women and minority students toward careers in the sciences, through active recruiting of high school students interested in the sciences, by offering merit scholarships, by nurturing them through peer mentoring for academic progress and socialization, and through faculty advising and guided research experiences. Efforts are ongoing to increase the number of American minority students. The Pre-Health Advisor will help students achieve acceptance at graduate or medical schools. An increasing number of female students are electing to major in the sciences, and the University is committed to their success. The Women Involved in Living and Learning (WILL) Program is a University program, replicated elsewhere, that strengthens and expands the leadership qualities, analytical skills, and self-esteem of undergraduate women through Women's Studies coursework and women/gender-focused programming experiences, often including the sciences. The University has increased the number of female science faculty members, and at present 32% of the full time science faculty are women, as are many of the science lab managers and adjunct professors.

Richmond has made great strides toward the strategic plan’s goals for the sciences. Research Corporation, a private foundation devoted to the advancement of science, established a partnership with the University through a science development award to help Richmond’s program to evolve into a national model of science education. In addition, several other private foundations have responded to our science initiative plan, including the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, as have the NSF and NIH. A number of proposals are pending with, or soon to be submitted to, other national foundations in support of Science Initiative objectives.

Because of our strong foundation in the sciences, the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program awarded the University of Richmond several grants: $273,951 for instrumentation for neuroscience (2006); $340,391 for the acquisition of a confocal microscope for research and teaching (2004); $304,714 to acquire a new mass spectrometer (2003); $347,005 for new electron microscopy equipment (2003); $480,694 for acquisition of a High Field NMR (2001); and $151,758 for the development of a computing cluster for nuclear physics research (2001). The University received and fulfilled a $500,000 Kresge Foundation Challenge Grant for scientific instrumentation. The University has received three NSF Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement awards. About ten faculty members have current NSF grants for research, nearly all of which support one or more students in summer research.

The National Institutes of Health have supported research at the University of Richmond as well, including a grant of more than $600,000 for “Memory Self Efficacy and Memory Performance in Adulthood,” and smaller AREA grants for explorations in anti-tumor processes, lymphatic heart muscle myoblasts, the effects of reproduction on addiction, and “Pregnancy and Neural and Behavioral Plasticity in the Female.”

Internal funding from the University of Richmond supports faculty and student research, including the faculty summer stipends, research and travel grants, and undergraduate and graduate student research grants, summer fellowships and travel grants. In 2005-06, more than $170,000 was awarded for peer-reviewed faculty grants. In 2005-06, the University awarded more than $197,000 in grants to support student research projects. In addition, the University supports faculty research by offering start-up funds in the range of $80,000-$200,000 for new faculty in the sciences, one-semester research leave for new faculty in their fourth year, full-year sabbaticals to faculty after seven years, topping-off funds for faculty receiving partial sabbatical support from external grants, and reduced teaching loads when research demands it.

03/07
FC&GR

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