Texas A&M U Corpus Christi Tries In4Grants to Hit R&D Goals
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 03/15/12
Texas A&M University Corpus Christi has implemented a new web-based service to help with its research-related work. The 10,000-student institution has subscribed to In4Grants, a software-as-a-service program that provides a search engine for finding funding opportunities, collaborating with others during proposal development, and tracks research-related documents, project workflow, and team interaction.
The university received a little more than $15 million in research and development funds during the 2010 fiscal year. That was about a million dollars less than the previous year. But the Corpus Christi school has set a long-term goal of becoming a top-tier research university in the future and increasing research by $10 million per year over the next three years.
The institution will be giving 250 users--including faculty, researchers, and collaborators from partner institutions--access to the grant service. A primary objective in using In4Grants is to be able to turn to a single source to find relevant grant funding programs, research commercialization awards, and federal contracts from federal agencies, foundations, and other sources. The users will also be able to use the service to set up collaboration workspaces for proposal development and research that allows for commenting and inter-group email.
"We have pretty aggressive goals and In4Grants is a powerful platform that gives us the tools we need to meet our strategic goals," said Ron George, research development officer. "We also get the added benefit that all activity and progress is performed and tracked in one place for future review and reporting."
Other institutional customers for In4Grants include Northern Illinois University and Eastern Michigan University.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.