Thirty-two academic initiatives have been selected this year to receive Academic Excellence Fund awards totaling $1.6 million.

The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) notified the sponsors of the funded proposals at the end of January. The initiatives, representing all three campuses and a broad array of academic disciplines, were chosen from among 87 proposals.

“We were able to increase our funding only slightly over last year, and it was very difficult to decide which projects to fund,” said Michael Pazzani, vice president for research and graduate and professional education.

Many of the funded initiatives include projects that advance undergraduate and graduate education and emphasize interdisciplinary, collaborative research. “In selecting initiatives, we were particularly interested in projects that established resources or facilities that could serve multiple groups across the university, and those that could become self-sustaining,” Pazzani said.

The awards support projects in the humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and physical sciences, ranging from $100,000 for enhancing digital image accessibility for teaching and study through ARTstor and Luna Insight  to $20,000 for multimodal monitoring of collaborative teamwork.

Several grants provide seed money for new centers, such as a Center on Health Inequalities Later in life, a Particle Analysis Facility, and a Nursing Faculty Development Institute, a joint effort between Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Other awards provide seed money for new academic initiatives, such as a professional science master’s program in New Brunswick, a health care MBA specialization in Camden, and an undergraduate program in pharmaceutical/health care purchasing and supply management in Newark.

ORSP took over the Academic Excellence Fund program, now in its fifth year, from the Office of Academic Affairs in 2006. Pazanni’s office reviews all proposals in consultation with the Newark and Camden provosts and Philip Furmanski, executive vice president for academic affairs.

Camden AEF Awards 2007–08                                

• Children’s Rights Clinic – $50,000
• Initiative to Develop a Health Care MBA Specialization – $40,000
• Program in Video and Film – $60,000

Newark AEF Awards 2007–08         

• Administrative Transparency Initiative – $30,000
• Information Technology for Emergency Management – $40,000
• Interdisciplinary Collaborative: Programmatic Social-Behavioral Science Research Informing Public Policy about the Collateral Consequence of a Felony Conviction –$25,000
• Joint BS/MBA Degree for Rutgers Business School Students in Newark and New Brunswick – $10,000
• Service MBA: An Undergraduate BA-BS in Science and MBA Joint Degree Program (Newark and New Brunswick) – $10,000
• An Interdisciplinary Collaborative: Programmatic Social-Behavioral Science Research Informing Public Policy about the Collateral Consequence of a Felony Conviction –$25,000
• New Undergraduate Program in Pharmaceutical/Health Care Purchasing and Supply Management – $20,000
• Re-establishing Local Control of the Newark Public Schools – $40,000
• Research Consortium on the Human Side of Threat Detection – $35,000
• Rutgers–UMDNJ Nursing Faculty Development Institute – $30,000
• Seed Funding for an Undergraduate Major in Public Service and the Establishment of the Center for Urban Issues and Public Service at the School of Public Affairs and Administration – $30,000
• Soil Characterization Facility in Support of Urban Environmental Research – $50,000

New Brunswick AEF Awards 2007–08                                

• Acquisition of a Flow Cytometer/ High-Speed Cell Sorter and Establishment of a Particle Analysis Facility – $110,000
• ARTstor and Luna Insight: Enhancing Digital Image Accessibility for Teaching and Study – $100,000
• Bio-Ammonia for a Portable Hydrogen Generator –      $80,000
• Building the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative – $110,000
• Center of Excellence for Cyber-Security and Information Assurance –  $75,000
• Climate and Health Research Initiative – $75,000
• Developing a Building Performance Evaluation Capability – $20,000
• Developing Digital Expertise for Transnational Feminist Research – $35,000
• Development of a Center on Health Inequalities in Later Life – $75,000
• Development of a Confidential Research Data Center for Social, Economic, and Health Studies at Rutgers – $50,000
• Development of a High-Speed Cell Sorting Shared Facility Core – $110,000
• Electronic Functionalization of Organic Semiconductors with Self-Assembly Monolayers – $60,000
• Engendering the Global: The IRW Global Scholars Program – $40,000
• Multidisciplinary and Multinational Research Agenda on Violence Against Women –$50,000
• Proposal to Integrate Information Science and Economics: A Foundation for Major Real-Time Multimodal Monitoring of Collaborative Teamwork – $20,000
• Research Instrumentation and Cyber-Enabled Grant Funding – $80,000
• Rutgers Professional Science Master’s Programs: A New Vision for Professional Education in the 21st Century – $40,000
• Time Resolved Photoluminescence Spectroscopy for Optical Probing of Organic Solar Cells – $50,000