Creating Signature Centers at IUPUI: Procedure and Timeline

October 4, 2006

Dear Faculty Colleagues:

I wrote to you last month requesting proposals for the creation of signature centers at IUPUI. From the feedback and questions I have received in recent weeks, it seems that there is much interest and considerable activity in writing signature center proposals. This letter is meant to describe the procedure, give a timeline, and clarify the funding/matching process.

Procedure and Timeline:

1. Proposals must be submitted by October 23, 2006 both electronically and in hard copy to the school dean as well as to my assistant, Ms. Sue Herrell, Office of Academic Affairs, 355 North Lansing Street, AO 126, Indianapolis, IN 46202-2896 [Tel: 317-274-4477; E-mail: sherrell@iupui.edu].
2. Deans will set up small faculty committees within their schools to screen the proposals and rank order all of them based on academic merit and the criteria expected for signature center designation described in my previous letter [http://www.iupui.edu/administration/acad_affairs/signaturecenters.html]. This rank ordering should be sent to the Office of Academic Affairs by November 13, 2006. A very brief one paragraph description of the strong and weak points of each proposal would be helpful.
3. Two faculty committees, the IUPUI Council of Associate Deans for Research and the IUPUI Research Committee, will independently review the proposals from a campus-wide perspective, and recommend potential signature centers for funding. These recommendations should be made by December 11, 2006. The committees could also look at proposals from already well-established IUPUI centers and recommend that they be designated as signature centers with immediate effect.
4. Final funding decisions will be made soon after the beginning of the spring semester in January 2007, after establishing the availability of matching funds from various schools.

Funding/Matching:

As previously announced, the funding level for each approved proposal is expected not to exceed $100K per year for three years, with the cost to be shared equally between the central administration and decanal units. Thus, for a proposal approved for $240K over three years, the central administration will provide $120K and the school will provide $120K, both amounts being cash contributions to a special account set up for that proposal. In this way, decanal units will double their contribution to support research. The contribution from the central administration will begin in Spring 2007. However, in order to give more budget flexibility to the schools, they may choose to begin their contributions either in Spring 2007, or in Fall 2007 at the beginning of the new fiscal year.

I hope there will be many high quality proposals from very diverse areas of research. We will be able to provide funding for a number of proposals, and others may well prove to be attractive to potential donors during the course of an aggressive fundraising campaign which we are planning to commence next year.

Best Wishes,

Uday Sukhatme
Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties

Academic Affairs