As an urban public institution, research and scholarship in the College of Humanities and Sciences is centered on strong collaborations and partnerships with the local community and entities across the state, country and world. We learn from our community partners and seek to conduct research that is highly relevant to the challenges they face, including addiction, youth violence, energy storage, climate change, invasive species, racial relations, disease, and many others.
CHS is also a leader in experiential learning, and throughout their education, our students are engaged in research at VCU, in the community, and internationally.
As shown in the figure, support for research and scholarship activities is diverse, coming from a variety of sponsors.
Under the leadership of the associate dean for research and operations, the College’s sponsored programs office actively engages with faculty, postdocs and students to support proposal development, submission and award management.
CHS-SPO strives to provide exemplary service to all faculty and investigators through expediting and assisting in the following areas:
We are committed to promoting and enhancing research and scholarly activity by providing service to all constituents by building relationships with the people we serve, being responsive to their needs, and being proactive in our approach.
CHS-SPO will continue to operate in a culture that promotes honesty, integrity, fairness, and exemplary professional conduct. Further, we will encourage our employees to develop expertise through training and experience to ensure that end-users obtain excellent services with practical results.
While CHS-SPO overall seeks to support the College’s strategic plan Excellence Beyond Boundaries, we have a particular stake in Strategic Focus Area III ('Develop and enhance nationally recognized student and faculty scholarship, research and creative initiatives committed to addressing challenges in our urban Richmond community and beyond').
CHS-SPO is a fully integrated support function for the College’s research initiatives. We will contribute to grant development and improvement, collaboration support, and tracking of initiatives that display and exemplify the College’s rich wealth of research and scholarly activity. The office will offer reference materials, lead proposal development and review, facilitate training for new and current principal investigators, perform accounting operations and compliance services for individual grants, and other pertinent duties related to grants administration.