Claremont Colleges Team Awarded Grant to Enhance Faculty Peer Review Networks

An initiative to provide faculty with a structured, expert-driven review process to strengthen grant applications and increase research funding success has been underwritten and is being directed by staff members at three of the Claremont Colleges.

Nicole Wallens, director of sponsored research at Harvey Mudd College; Beth Jager, executive director of sponsored research at Claremont McKenna College; and Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research at Pomona College, were awarded $5,000 for the project, “Steps Toward PUI/ERI Presubmission Peer Review Networks (P3RNs).” The award is sponsored by New Opportunities for Research Development and InfoReady. It is the latest project of the Claremont Research Development Network (CRDN), which Wallens founded and co-directs with Jager and Gerstein. The CRDN develops resources and programs to facilitate faculty collaboration across The Claremont Colleges while supporting individual faculty scholarship, research and creative work.

“I am excited to develop a resource that I have been discussing with faculty for some time and will leverage the collective expertise of the Consortium,” said Wallens (shown right), who provides support to Harvey Mudd departments and helps advance faculty research and scholarship.

The grantees will explore the development of collaborative presubmission peer review networks across collectives of predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs) and other emerging research institutions (ERIs). Their goal is to use these expert proposal review networks to mitigate the difficulties sponsored research officers at relatively small and/or highly teaching-focused institutions face in securing a critical mass of subject experts as compared to large-scale institutions with substantial numbers of grant-active faculty in each major field.

Based upon data gathered in a series of interviews, the project team will create a workbook of best practices for faculty-led peer-review processes at PUI/ERI institutions. That workbook will facilitate future piloting of PUI/ERI presubmission peer review networks that can serve as models for spreading those networks to institutions across the U.S.