Research, Innovation and Economic Development

PRIORITY 1

Maintain or surpass Carnegie Category R2, “High Research Spending and Doctorate Production”

TACTICS

• Recruit and retain faculty, staff, and students intrinsically motivated to conduct sponsored research counted on the NSF HERD Survey.
• Dedicate resources to support a predictable research environment with multiyear funding sources and incentives to conduct research by leveraging recovered F&A to support researchers.
• Administration will facilitate research endeavors with clear, coordinated goals and by communicating the importance of research.

PRIORITY 2

Recruit, retain, and reward productive sponsored research faculty, students, and support staff

TACTICS

• Provide orientations and mentoring networks for all faculty, staff, and graduate students on research culture and opportunities. Mentor graduate students to be researchers.
• Align initial faculty salary and annual compensation, including merit increases to research productivity, grant funding, and economic development/contract research. Incentivize faculty to seek external funding to support graduate and undergraduate students and research staff. Align budgetary practices to guarantee stable and predictable funding model for research support initiatives that span multiple fiscal years.
• Dedicate resources for students engaging in research, including recruiting and preparation of applicants, multiyear budget commitments for student support, dedicated career/internship support, and professional development.

PRIORITY 3

Improve research infrastructure

TACTICS

• Upgrade and expand research facilities such as laboratories, libraries, computing clusters, and specialized equipment to ensure researchers have access to state-of-the-art resources, as well as safe and inclusive working environments.
• Ensure access to research literature and tools that support the entire research lifecycle, including support for open science and scholarship. Ensure researchers have access to a wide range of research literature through subscriptions to academic journals, databases, and electronic resources and tools that provide effective discovery of openly available content.
• Reduce administrative barriers for researchers. Evaluate and improve culture, policies, and procedures of administrative units that support research.

PRIORITY 4

Expand industry collaborations

TACTICS

• Establish a baseline for research collaborations and partnerships among UNO faculty, The Beach, and local organizations, and evaluate the strengths of existing collaborations in the Greater New Orleans region (i.e., GNO, Inc., New Orleans Business Alliance) and identify areas for improvement.
• Increase sponsored student activities on campus that provide learning and engagement opportunities related to research, internships, and summer programs, (i.e., STEM programming, Startup UNO, Innovate UNO).
• Establish measurable outcomes to evaluate the impact and success of research collaborations and community partnerships.

PRIORITY 5

Leverage UNO as an anchor institution for regional growth

TACTICS

• Establish a baseline of existing engagement and promote funding to connect faculty with local organizations to address local issues holistically.
• Leverage administrative expertise at UNO, The Beach at UNO, and community partners to identify and apply for grants with a focus on projects involving the community.
• Working in tandem with local economic organizations such as GNO Inc., City of New Orleans, and State of Louisiana to understand workforce needs and align UNO programming and industry collaborations to help develop a talent pipeline and showcase UNO’s role in strengthening the local workforce.