Second Round of VCU Presidential Research Incentive Program Announced

By Sathya Achia Abraham

The Virginia Commonwealth University Presidential Research Incentive Program has announced its second round of internal funding awards totaling more than $660,000 to support faculty engaged in new, emerging or continuing research.

Sixteen awards supporting projects across the institution from medicine, allied health, arts, education, life sciences, engineering, social work, dentistry, business, pharmacy and the College of Humanities and Sciences were funded in this round.

“The second round of PRIP awards demonstrates a very important commitment at VCU to its role as a research university, particularly as the Commonwealth continues to look to universities to lead as innovators in the emerging economy,” said VCU President Michael Rao, Ph.D. “Providing new opportunities for my VCU faculty colleagues to expand their research and scholarship encourages the kind of creativity and productivity that Virginia needs.”

The VCU Presidential Research Incentive Program, or PRIP, received 90 applications from schools and colleges across VCU. Of the 90 applications, 16 were recommended for funding to the PRIP Review Committee. Ultimately, 16 different projects involving 20 faculty members received funding.

“The tremendous response to this initiative demonstrates broad faculty commitment to launching externally funded research. As in the past, the matching support provided by our schools and departments to support this program was impressive and allowed maximum leverage of institutional resources,” said Francis Macrina, Ph.D., VCU’s vice president for research.

Once again, this unique program has brought together investigators interested in common research paths from across schools and within departments to share expertise and knowledge.

Take, for example, the unique pairing and cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers Alan Dow, M.D., assistant dean of medical education in the VCU School of Medicine, and Aaron Anderson, Ph.D., associate professor and vice-chair in the Department of Theatre. The duo has been working together for seven years to develop a theater-medicine curriculum that uses techniques of theater pedagogy to teach communication skills to health care workers. It is the only program of this type in existence and has been featured in both the lay press and medical journals.

Through their recent PRIP award, Dow and Anderson will be able to extend their current work by assessing the effects of an intensive communication curriculum of theater-based skills on patient perceptions of medical students’ communication abilities.

“Our goal is to improve doctor-patient relationships and use that rapport to improve outcomes,” said Dow. “Because research funding for innovative educational programs is scarce, the PRIP award allows us to measure the effects of this program and demonstrate how patients can be helped.”

Faculty grants were awarded based on a two-step review process involving the schools and the VCU Research Development Advisory Council. The first stage was a school level review, in which each school received applications from its faculty and established a rigorous review process that used the PRIP Review Committee (PRC) selection criteria, which centered on the scholarly merit of the project, the potential for extramural funding leading from this project and the contribution of the project to the scholarly trajectory/line of inquiry of the investigator. Each school forwarded to the PRC those applications receiving the highest ratings at the unit level and for which there was a funding commitment from the dean.

PRIP dollars provide 60 percent of the award and the faculty member’s department and/or school provided 40 percent. The funding period is 18 months.

For more information on the program, visit http://www.research.vcu.edu/vpr/prip/.

For the 2011 PRIP awardees, visit http://www.news.vcu.edu/pdf/PRIP11.pdf.