SDSU Awarded NSF Grant for Research Support Conference

This piece by South Dakota State University was published August 1.

Through a nearly $100,000 grant, the National Science Foundation has positioned South Dakota State University to help improve the nation’s research enterprise.

One of the National Science Foundation’s primary goals is to increase the United States’ ability to conduct high-quality, impactful research. SDSU’s Division of Research and Economic Development has been awarded a $99,998 grant via NSF’s GRANTED (Growing Research Access for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity) program to bring together research support professionals from the Northern Plains region for a capacity-building conference.

GRANTED is focused on addressing systemic barriers within the nation’s research enterprise by improving research support and service capacity at emerging research institutions.

The conference will be held in Rapid City on June 6-7, 2024, at Black Hills State University’s Rapid City facility. The grant will help underwrite travel and lodging costs for 50 research support professionals from a diverse group of higher education institutions. These include both intensive and emerging research institutions, primarily undergraduate institutions, and tribal colleges and universities from across a five-state (South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana) region.

Dianne Nagy, SDSU’s assistant vice president for research development and administration, will serve as the principal investigator on the grant, with co-investigators from Montana State University, University of Wyoming, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and North Dakota State University.

“This conference will enable geographically isolated research support professionals to exchange proven practices, share resources and opportunities, and chart a course for future collaboration, shifting mindsets away from serving individual institutions to supporting the regional research enterprise as a whole,” Nagy said. “We expect this increase in collaboration and sharing to reduce duplicative work for understaffed units and assist institutions who lack the bandwidth or resources to create their own training materials or host events.”

A virtual option for those unable to travel to the conference will also be available.

For more on the conference, call SDSU’s Division of Research at 605-688-6696, email sdsu.radcon@sdstate.edu, or visit sdstate.edu/research.