Research

Research Development Services

city of porltand

Get Your Research Funded

We offer strategic support to elevate your research. Our team partners with you to forge interdisciplinary collaborations, pursue ambitious new funding, and sharpen your proposal's narrative for a decisive competitive edge.

Overview

Our Research Development team provides dedicated, strategic support to elevate your research and enhance your competitiveness for external funding. We partner with faculty across all disciplines, acting as a strategic sounding board and a hands-on resource to help you navigate the complex funding landscape and position your most ambitious projects for success. 

Our support is tailored to your specific needs and can include:

  • Institutional Support: Streamlining the process for securing powerful and persuasive institutional letters of support.
  • Strategic Proposal Planning: Developing a winning strategy for new proposals or providing targeted feedback for a successful resubmission to maximize your chances of success.
  • Funding Opportunity Matching: Identifying and targeting the most promising funding agencies and specific opportunities that align with your research concept.
  • Collaborator & Team Building: Forging strategic connections by identifying and engaging potential collaborators both within PSU and at other institutions.
  • Large-Scale Proposal Management: Providing hands-on project management and development support for large, complex, and interdisciplinary proposals, freeing you to focus on the intellectual core of your project.

Institutional Letters of Support

We can provide assistance preparing letters of support for proposals that need to be signed by a Vice President or someone with even greater institutional authority. For more information, please visit the Institutional Letters of Support page.

Proposal Development Support

Our team provides dedicated proposal development support to help faculty craft the most competitive submissions possible. This focused support ranges from strategic guidance for individual investigator proposals to comprehensive project management for what we call LIONS—Large, Interdisciplinary, and Otherwise Nasty Submissions.

Explore the specific services we offer for each type of proposal below. If you're ready to map out your next project, we encourage you to schedule a consultation to discuss your research concepts, align them with funding opportunities, and assess project readiness.

For faculty planning to submit large, complex, interdisciplinary proposals, we can provide proposal management and development support to a limited number of teams through our Large, Interdisciplinary, & Otherwise Nasty Submissions (LIONS) program.

Photograph of a lion with the phrase "large interdisciplinary & otherwise nasty submissions"

The LIONS program helps build research capacity by providing enhanced support to teams of faculty preparing and submitting large, complex grant proposals to external funding agencies. Projects selected for participation in LIONS will be eligible for additional pre‐submission and post-award support from the Office of Research and Graduate Studies. We offer several levels of service, depending on timeline and need. These levels include:

  • Formative Consultation: 1:1 meetings to discuss research concepts, funding opportunities, evaluate fit and determine readiness.
  • LIONS Tier 1: Individual consultations to discuss project ideas and validate funding opportunities for a LIONS
  • LIONS Tier 2: Assistance establishing a strong team and plan for an upcoming LIONS
  • LIONS Tier 3: Proposal Management and Development support to get your proposal to the finish line
Click here to learn more about the LIONS program.

The Research Development Team offers assistance on a limited basis to faculty developing individual compelling, competitive proposals - from strategizing for proposal submission (or resubmission), to finding the best-fitting funding opportunity, through finalizing and strengthening the proposal documents. Please note that all individual proposal services are offered on availability, with scheduling priority going to the LIONS program.

  • Formative Consultations: 1:1 meetings to discuss research concepts, funding opportunities, evaluate fit and determine readiness.
  • Tier 1: Discuss funding strategies for a particular project.
  • Tier 2: Vet project ideas, strategize around submissions (or resubmissions), validate funding opportunities and develop concept papers.
  • Tier 3: Proposal narrative and package review.
Click here to learn more about services available to faculty developing proposals for individual projects.

How to Request Support | Frequently Asked Questions 

In addition to these direct services, we offer a number of standalone Resources available to Principal Investigators at any time. 

How to Request Proposal Development Support

Please complete the Proposal Development Request form to request a consultation or proposal development services.

Please note that these services are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority going to strategically important proposal efforts. We encourage PIs to contact our team as soon as possible to ensure adequate time to fulfill the requests. Timing guidelines for making a request are as follows:

  • For LIONS, please submit a service request at least 90-120 days prior to the sponsor deadline depending on Tier.
  • For smaller individual proposals, please submit a service request at least 60 days prior to the sponsor deadline.

Frequently Asked Questions

How are requests evaluated and prioritized?

The Research Development team receives more timely high-quality requests for support than can often be provided*. Reviews of new requests are conducted by the Associate Vice President for Research and the Research Development team, taking into a number of factors that include:

  • Current portfolio workload, timeliness of request
  • The potential for multi-, inter-, or trans-disciplinary research
  • The degree to which the proposed research spans college boundaries
  • The impact on the PI team as evidenced by diversity in discipline and career stage
  • The impact on students (undergraduate and/or graduate) as evidenced by the budget and training program
  • The impact and size of the budget relative to discipline

*Please note that all individual proposal services are offered on availability, with scheduling priority going to LIONS teams and to strategically important proposal efforts.

Does the total dollar request for a proposal impact my chances of receiving support?

Budgets vary significantly across disciplines, and we are committed to supporting research across the entire PSU community, using the above criteria as a guide. For STEM fields, “large” might mean several million dollars, while humanities proposals may be more modest. Investigators across all disciplines are encouraged to apply for assistance when developing proposals.