Future Meetings
July 1: Karen is planning to do a presentation on her work with the central dogma
curriculum development group, and Mark will finalize the supplemental funding
request.
July 8: Tentatively discussing biology question development and the edits to Jenny’s
document suggested by the QDC group.
July 15: Jill will present on some more of the FLC data
July 22: Discussion for the Annual Report
Supplemental Funding
Mark started by sharing his screen with the document we created as a group. He went
through the changes suggested by other PIs and made some small edits/changes to help
clarify things. We need to have two pieces to our proposal: a description of how we
were able to fund our current research, and our requests for further funding.
UMaine – once Karen rotates off of the 50/50 research/teaching position, it’s possible
she will become a full-time teaching faculty at UMaine. Perhaps we can ask for funding
that will fund a full-time position and split that money amongst people, or we can ask
for half-time funding and fulfill the other half with departmental teaching
responsibilities. Mark reminded us that we were only able to get research associates
because we combined grants and moved money around. We need to be very clear that
we already found “extra” funding, and in order to continue doing research, we need
funding for at least one research associate. This would be a request to extend the
WIDER by two more years. Michelle would really like to ask for full funding for a
research associate because it could be difficult to find 50% funding somewhere else.
The two options that Michelle put into the Google doc were a half or full-time research
associate plus money for two additional FLC members. Her fallback option is to move
Karen into the role of FLC member. Scott was previously supported by a different grant.
At UMaine, honors thesis students are supposed to be paid a small stipend for working
in the lab so she would like to get funding for an undergraduate. Mark suggested
requesting REU money for undergrads. Mary Anne confirmed it is fine to ask for
supplemental funding for REU students.
UGA – Funding for Jill’s salary comes to an end in August 2016. There is money for the
existing FLC members to continue through years 4 and 5 but there isn’t money for any
additional ones. One suggestion from Paula (via Jill) was to use a graduate student to
help with the research. Jennifer pointed out that at UGA, a full-time graduate student
would be only $20,000 or so, which is at least half of the cost of a post-doc. Michelle’s
non-monetary concern is that we are studying faculty, and it might be difficult to get a
graduate student who is able to have those conversations with faculty participants. Jill
pointed out that we have been able to get a lot done with some really good
undergraduates as well, so we don’t have to worry right away about getting all of the
research done.
SAMPI – Mary Anne wants additional funding for a graduate student to help with the
evaluation of the additional participants. Mark asked her to fill out how Eva had been
funded previously so that we have a real outline for our funding requests.
Mark still needs confirmation from CU-Boulder (Jenny), Stony Brook (Ross), and USF
(Luanna).
Annual Report
This is not cumulative, but rather a description of what we accomplished this past year.
Like last year, we can all submit the same text in our report. Mark would like everyone
to collect the detailed information on what has been accomplished this year at each
institution. This includes publications, presentations, number of meetings, interviews,
COPUS, etc.
Jennifer asked about the goals from the document from last year and the timeline. She
suggested somebody update this for the current year. The documents are all on Google
Docs, in the Project Management folder. Michelle asked if accomplishments from the
faculty and supporting staff (i.e., Scott) should be included. Mark said absolutely as
these are important broader impacts.
Jill asked who would be responsible for copying over the old report, making a new
template, and updating the timelines. Rosa said she would be taking a lot of
responsibility for making sure these were updated appropriately for the report. Jennifer
said that last year, each of the PIs put together a document for their own piece of the
project for the accomplishments. These were sent to MSU and they were assembled
into one document there. John Merrill said that there was a lot of redundancy they had
to cut later, so he suggested referring to the current year as we each write our
components. Mark showed that Google docs is now capable of tracking changes, so
Mark and John think we should make our changes directly in the Google doc itself. In
order to turn this on, use “suggestion mode.” There is a new folder for the current
annual report. Everyone should make their changes directly in the document. Mark
would like to have a draft completed by July 22 so that we can discuss it at the PD-FLC
meeting that day.