New office to facilitate global research

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Faculty from across campus are coming together in an effort to solve some of the world’s most “wicked” problems with the help of the newly established MSU Office of International Research Collaboration.

From food security to climate change, the office will provide resources for faculty from multidisciplinary backgrounds to collaborate on complex grant applications from external sources, said Dawn Pysarchik, associate dean for international programs and studies.

The office is housed in the International Center.

“Complex world problems, or wicked problems, don’t have an easy solution and that’s why the concept of crossing disciplines is very important,” Pysarchik said. “Those perspectives combine in unique way to help address wicked problems by drawing upon MSU’s research strengths.”

Funding for the new office was allocated by the Office of the Provost and the International Studies and Program Office said Jeffrey Riedinger, dean for international programs and studies. Riedinger said external funding is even more vital than ever to conducting university research.

“We simply don’t have the kind of support from state government anymore for faculty to do what they want to do in the international arena,” Riedinger said.

“Many colleges at MSU provide core support for faculty to learn about funding opportunities. We’re not at all interested in duplicating that support, but we’ve identified a gap in terms of pre-award support when the initiative involves multiple faculty from multiple colleges.”

Riedinger said four staff members have been hired for the new office, which will have responsibility to the entire university, unlike prior to the office’s creation when the few colleges that provided monetary support received priority in international research programs.

Steve Hanson, chairman of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, said one of the office’s main targets will be organizing faculty across campus to utilize the many resources at MSU.

“It’s difficult to write multimillion dollar grants,” he said. “It takes a lot of time (and) a lot of technical details. We play a role in the networking piece, knowing where faculty are on campus helps make our efforts more successful.”

Hanson said one of the first grant applications to the U.S. Agency for International Development for food security research already has been completed as a part of the office’s efforts on a very short deadline.

“We were able to pull together a lot of different resources from all over the university in two weeks,” he said. “We don’t know whether the grant will be successful, but the effort itself was successful. We got people to really understand what it’s going to take.”

Riedinger said although MSU is not the first university to experiment with this kind of office, it is serving as a model for other institutions.

“We’ve been charting the course for many of our peer institutions,” he said.

“They’re taking their cue from us on how to better support faculty in research collaboration.
(The office) will have a positive impact on people’s lives overseas as well as here in the state of Michigan and at the university.”

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