Improving FSU's Poor NIH Funding??

Improving FSU's Poor NIH Funding??


pauldirac
8/25/2014

"With all of the discussion of FSU's poorly performing engineering program these days, I have seen little discussion of NIH funding.  I was not encouraged when I looked at the most recent data from 2013.

The bottom line:  For all of the talk about focusing more on research, FSU's med school continues to produce little in the way of the kind of funded research that is valued in the medical community and ranks even lower on the list of med schools nationally for NIH funding than I think it did a decade ago.  I understood the argument to be patient back when FSU's medical school was in its starting years, but basically we have shown no real progress on this front in the past decade.  In fact, I think we now rank 6th among the public universities in the state of Florida for NIH funding at our med school.  We have declined in relative performance.  Please pardon my impatience, but this is pathetic performance by any measure for a research university.   

Is anyone aware of a plan to improve FSU's poor NIH grant funding at the medical school?  What kind of hiring are we doing and why aren't we seeing progress on this front?  How is the effort to pursue preeminence in faculty hiring at the medical school going, and can the taxpayers of Florida expect to see FSU rise in its NIH funding in the coming years as a result?  What can a new president do to help us improve on this front?  Is there a plan that will position FSU to at least bring in more funding than FAU and FIU?  (Fortunate for us, at this point I think that we can only go up.) 

If the current administration does not understand the significance of this issue, I hope the new one does and that the trustees and governor's office and BOG are made aware of it.  More to come on FSU's overall performance in 2013 NIH funding for universities in Florida.......

45   UF       $84,898.636
88   USF     $20,411,666
116 UCF     $5,646,849
125 FIU       $3,010,564
128 FAU      $2,250,167
129 FSU      $2,169,999


Link: http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2013/NIH_Awards_2013.htm "


"This is the data on overall 2013 NIH finding (including that in medical schools and in other university departments) for the public universities in Florida.  As you may recall, FSU had some very good recent years ($16,571,285 million in NIH funding in 2012 and $17,524,805 in 2011 and $20,926,262 in 2010) -- and I was one of the first to celebrate this -- but unfortunately we have dropped significantly on this front.  Still we are fortunate to be ranked 3rd in the state given our pathetic medical school grant performance -- though I must say FIU is way too close for comfort (they were actually head of us in 2011 so they have dropped too). 

These are very difficult dollars for FSU to resecure.  I understand it is conveinent for those on campus to say federal money is tight and there are more scientists than ever chasing a finite pool of NIH dollars.  However, I think we really need to focus on a campus-wide strategy to improve in this area -- just using our preeminence money to hire hire a bunch of assistant professors is not going to make a much difference for the university's NIH funding for at least a decade (probably more) into the future. 

UF          $98,425,894
USF       $43,624,732
FSU       $13,266,637
FIU        $12,900,377
UCF       $6,056,895
FAU       $4,958,036"