Council on Research Meeting Minutes
September 19, 2013
Life Sciences Research Building, Conference Room 1144
9:30am-11:30am
Members present: Aiguo Dai, James Dias, Lisa Donohue, Samantha Friedman, Kevin Knuth, Igor
Kuznetsov, Janet Marler, John Monfasani, Jen Montimurro, Yangzi Isabel Tian
Members absent: Erzsebet Fazekas, Hemalata Iyer, Kajal Lahiri, Elaine Lasda Bergman, Loretta Pyles
Also attending: Adrienne Bonilla, Jennifer Manganello, Antigone McKenna, Asher Pauli, Thecla Philip
and Theresa Walker
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by Council on Research Chair, John Monfasani, at 9:35am. New
members were welcomed and introductions were made by all attendees.
Approval of April 25, 2013 Meeting Minutes
The minutes were approved with the following amendments:
1. On page 2, Samantha Friedman asked that the first bullet point under “Graduate students and their
involvement in research” be rephrased from "from her experience as head of a graduate program
she feels that the package is horrible." to "from her experience as head of a graduate program
she feels that the package is not competitive, offering much lower stipends than at peer
institutions."
2. Igor Kuznetsov noted that according to the minutes he was both present and absent at the April
meeting. His name is to be removed from the list of those absent.
3. On page 2, the third sentence of the second bullet should refer to “ARRA funding” rather than
“error funding”.
4. On page 3, the first bullet under the FRAP-A discussion should indicate that the committee made
ranked recommendations independently, not that the committee decides independently.
COR Subcommittee Membership
John Monfasani opened the floor for volunteers to chair or serve as members of the subcommittees,
noting that people can be chair of one subcommittee and serve as a member on another subcommittee.
Council on Research volunteers were as follows:
Benevolent Award Review:
Samantha Friedman, CAS/Sociology Chair
Members:
No new volunteers. Previous members are:
Elaine Lasda-Bergman, Environmental Health
Hemalata Iyer, CCI/Information Studies
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Conference/Journal Support Awards review:
Aiguo Dai, CAS/AES, Chair
Members:
No additional volunteers.
It was requested that Aiguo bring in someone else to participate on the committee, preferably
from the Humanities. It was also noted that ideally they should have organized a conference
before so they would be familiar with what is involved in arranging a conference
FRAP-A Awards Review:
Chair volunteer needed from COR
Members:
Samantha Friedman, CAS/Sociology
Jennifer Montimurro, RNA Institute
Kevin Knuth, CAS/Physics
It was noted that this committee needs a variety of people from across the university as they will
be reviewing awards applications from the entire campus community.
Committees on Centers, Institutes and
Specialized Research Laboratories:
Chair volunteer needed from COR – John
Monfasani recommended Kajal Lahiri,
Distinguished Professor, Economics
Members:
Samantha Friedman, CAS/Sociology
Jennifer Montimurro, RNA Institute
Igor Kuznetsov, SPH
Lisa Donohue, Environmental Health
It was noted that there is a real need for work from this committee this year. Last year a review
was done for CAS to identify which centers within the college were actually active. There is no
similar campus-wide list. A review of all centers needs to be done campus-wide to determine
which centers are active. The point was also raised that it would be useful to have the chair be a
full professor, as they have the necessary experience to evaluate and give feedback to center
directors. Ideally they would be part of the science faculty, as many of the research centers are
within the sciences. John Monfasani pointed out that with CNSE’s withdrawal from the Senate,
COR lost Bradley Thiel, a full professor.
Excellence in Research and Creative
Activities Award Review Committee:
John Monfasani, CAS/History, Chair
Members:
Aiguo Dai, CAS/AES
Yangzi Isabel Tian, CNSE, graduate student rep
Additional designees to be chosen by VPR
(Action)
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Researchers Liaison Committee:
Jennifer Montimurro, RNA Institute, Chair
Members:
Lisa Donohue, Environmental Health
Jennifer Manganello, SPH
It was noted that members who were not in attendance at the meeting had not been contacted to continue
serving on the subcommittees for this year. It was requested that the chairs of each subcommittee contact
members to ensure that they are willing to participate (Action). Additional members can be recruited from
faculty who are not part of the Council on Research.
2012-13 Research Year in Review, James A. Dias, Vice President for Research
Vice President for Research James A. Dias presented an overview of UAlbany’s research performance in
the 2012-13 financial year (Action: copy of the presentation to be sent to COR members). The following
points were noted:

It is critical to encourage PIs to apply for federal funding. Indirect cost recovery which apply to
grants come back to campus and are used to support other research, internal awards etc. Losses in
indirect cost recovery is an issue which will need to be dealt with this year and will affect the
awards reviewed by the subcommittees of the Council on Research

It was noted by COR members that we need to compare our figures to other universities which do
not have medical or engineering colleges, as these aspects often draw large amounts of grant
funding. Action: more data analysis to be done and provided to COR to compare our position
with similar universities that do not have medical schools or engineering colleges.

Decreases in funding are partly due to sequestration, ARRA funding no longer being available,
and a couple of large grants that were not continued in Rockefeller College. Vice President Dias
noted that when entities like Rockefeller College bring in large grants, one grant can be critical to
the amount of indirect cost recovery funds that come back to the campus. Rockefeller College
accounts for approximately 25% of the F&A funds that return to campus. It was also pointed out
that when CNSE becomes a completely separate entity next year, UAlbany research funding
numbers will suffer a corresponding decrease.

Vice President Dias also heavily emphasized the importance of encouraging nominations for the
Excellence in Research and Creative Activities Award. In order to achieve the goal of being
recognized as a leading research university, we must promote and recognize our faculty. If we
don’t promote and recognize our faculty leaders, we won’t be highly regarded nationally and
internationally. Two issues were raised:
1. More nominations are needed for the award. There has been a decrease in nominations in
recent years, and Vice President Dias stressed that we need to build structures of
recognition at earlier stages which would increase the number of faculty eligible for these
awards. A proposal for early career awards is currently on the President’s desk; we also
need to look at creating a mid-career award to recognize faculty members who are more
established in their career.
2. The criteria for who is being selected to be nominated for and win the award must be
reviewed. The winners last year were all recently promoted; Vice President Dias stressed
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that we need to also be looking for people who have the potential to be national academy
members, etc.
Survey being prepared by Jennifer Manganello, Associate Professor in Public Health and Provost
Fellow, on facilitators and barriers to faculty research productivity
Jennifer Manganello, Associate Professor and Provost Fellow, is currently starting a one-year project
examining ways to enhance research productivity at the University at Albany.
She identified five major elements which could be studied by a Provost’s Fellow in relation to enhancing
research productivity at the University at Albany:
1. Ways to increase funding opportunities
2. Ways to increase the visibility of the University at Albany as a research institution, including
participation by faculty at conferences, etc.
3. Best practices for pre- and post-award support
4. Business flow analysis and improvement (which could be a good project for someone from the
School of Business next year)
5. Data system improvements to stay up to date on research across UAlbany
Professor Manganello will be focusing on best practices for pre- and post-award support, and examining
both the barriers and facilitators to research productivity, including submitting grants for external funding.
Different stages of the grant life cycle require different types of support, and what she hopes to examine is
both where UAlbany is doing well, so that we can recognize those elements, and also where we can make
improvements to our support structures and processes. The survey is being informed by the University of
South Florida, which did a similar study in recent years.
Professor Manganello plans to start with a survey of faculty to find out what we’re doing well and what
they think they could use more help with, and to follow up with more in-depth interviews during the
spring semester. She requested the Council on Research’s assistance in providing feedback on the
questions she proposed for the survey. The Council members assented to providing this assistance.
Professor Manganello plans to have the survey ready in the next couple of weeks, and will then distribute
it to Council members for feedback in a word document where changes can be tracked (Action).
John Monfasani suggested that a good opportunity existed for Professor Manganello to join the
Researchers Liaison subcommittee, and it was generally agreed that this would be appropriate as her
research aligns with the mission of the subcommittee.
Guidelines for FRAP-A Committee in dealing with rankings from the schools
In the April 2013 meeting, the issue of what to do with rankings from different schools in reviewing
FRAP-A applications was discussed. John Monfasani had volunteered to craft new text to be added to the
guidelines as a recommendation for how to handle rankings submitted by the schools and colleges and
how much they should influence the workings of the committee, as follows:
In ranking applications the FRAP-A Committee will take into account any
ranking and justification of such ranking that come from the deans and
committees of the various schools, but shall not be bound by them. The
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Committee shall come to an independent determination informed by these
data and its own judgment on the relative merits of the applications.
It was noted that the review committee in the College of Arts and Sciences includes written justification
for their rankings, which would be a useful piece of information for COR reviewers to have from all
colleges. A brief discussion then ensued as to when the rankings should be made available to the COR
subcommittee. It was agreed that committee members should be given access to the rankings after they
had made their own decisions about which applications to recommend for funding, so as not to bias the
workings of the committee. Action: John Monfasani will add a clause in the new text to that effect and
provide the revised text to COR members for discussion at the next meeting. It was also noted that deans
will need to be educated that they will need to provide justifications for their rankings in submitting their
recommendations to the COR committee.
Meeting adjourned due to fire alarm 11:04am
Submitted by Elizabeth Rooks
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