Four collaborative administrative initiatives receive funding
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Written by: Cristóbal McKinney

The University of Iowa Office of the Provost has selected four collaborative administrative initiatives to receive funding from the Provost Investment Fund (PIF) in addition to the five academic initiatives selected in February.

Central units, such as Academic Support and Retention and the Office of Assessment, provide support services to students as well as faculty and staff at other units.

“I am proud to be investing in the people who serve our community so diligently and so often from behind the scenes,” says Sue Curry, interim executive vice president and provost. “The contributions of our central units enhance and multiply the effectiveness of the education, research, and service that happens on this campus. I would like to thank everyone in our central units and everyone who is helping to further develop those services.”

The central unit recipients of the 2019 Provost Investment Fund are:

  • Path to Distinction: Faculty Diversity Recruitment Pilot. With the goal of increasing faculty diversity, this pilot program will identify research-supported faculty recruitment strategies, implement them among search committees across campus, and evaluate their effectiveness.
  • Identifying Challenges and Addressing Obstacles to Understanding and Using Institutional Data. This project will involve a campuswide review of practices related to the use of institutional data. The project will identify how units use existing institutional data to support student success and what resources, training, and not-yet-collected institutional data could improve unit efforts.
  • College Algebra Redesign. This initiative will redesign the Math 1005 course (College Algebra), taken by a large number of first-generation and underrepresented students. The redesign will devote class time to interactive problem-solving instead of lecture, a method shown by research to improve student outcomes, and will create video lectures and provide instructor training to assist with the change.
  • Excelling@Iowa Expansion. Excelling@Iowa is an online information platform that predicts student retention; this initiative will develop the infrastructure necessary to expand its use from only first-year students to all undergraduates.

The PIF was created earlier this year to support interdisciplinary and innovative campus initiatives.

A call for proposals was circulated among Office of the Provost’s central units in November 2018. It stipulated that selected proposals would measure success against Association of American Universities metrics or explicitly advance the university toward goals outlined in the UI Strategic Plan 2016–2021.

For proposals from central units, the PIF allocates up to $225,000 for up to three years. Proposals also were required to identify potential sources for future funding—the PIF will not support initiatives beyond three years. PIF funding will be allocated in installments, and all project leaders will be required to provide annual progress reports before receiving installments.

Office of the Provost central unit leadership ranked each proposal, after which the highest-ranking proposals were presented to and voted on by Office of the Provost’s central unit leadership. The top four proposals were selected and recommended for funding to the provost.

The following units will collaborate with each other through initiatives selected for the 2019 Provost Investment Fund—Central Units.

  • Academic Advising
  • Academic Support and Retention
  • Athletics Center for Diversity and Enrichment
  • Center for Student Involvement and Leadership
  • College of Education
  • College of Engineering
  • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • College of Nursing
  • College of Public Health
  • Conversation Center
  • Division of Student Life
  • Information Technology Services
  • International Student and Scholar Services
  • Military and Veteran Student Services
  • Office of the Sexual Misconduct Response Coordinator
  • Office of Student Employment
  • Office of Student Financial Aid
  • Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology
  • Office of the Provost
  • Office of the Registrar
  • Orientation Services
  • Pomerantz Career Center
  • Student Disability Services
  • Student Health and Wellness
  • Tippie College of Business
  • TRiO Student Support Services
  • University College
  • University Counseling Service
  • University Human Resources, Family Services
  • University of Iowa Libraries