VIPs can be a highly beneficial organizational model for research faculty. Some of the benefits a VIP can bring include:
- Efficient Research Processes: A VIP model can simplify research operations, streamline personnel management, and ensure investigatory efforts are closely aligned with project goals.
- Enhanced Project Management: By reorganizing numerous facets of a project, VIP faculty can more effectively manage resources, timelines, researchers, and objectives. This control helps establish a clear direction and avoid potential pitfalls that might arise in less integrated projects.
- Improved Training and Mentoring: From conceptualization to implementation to completion, VIPs provide opportunities for students and early career researchers to be involved in various stages of a project. This exposure helps develop a wide range of skills and offers valuable hands-on experience.
- Streamlined Onboarding: VIPs offer unique opportunities for projects leads to share onboarding processes that in turn help facilitate the development of long-term, multi-year mentoring relationships with undergraduate researchers.
- Project Sustainability: VIPs encompass nearly the entire cycle of an academic research project. This continuity ensures that the benefits of research can be realized over a longer period and enjoyed by many.
- Collaboration Opportunities: By design, VIPs involve interdisciplinary teams and multiple stakeholders working together. These relationships can enrich research environments and broaden scopes of available expertises.
- Funding Opportunities: VIPs are appealing to funding agencies in their integrated approach to complex problems. This organizational posture can attract more substantial and sustained funding. Please don't hesitate to touch base see how OURI can support your grant applications!
OURI offers a range of direct assistances to VIP faculty. These include curricular materials, an application for undergraduate researchers looking to join a team, support letters for grant applications, and financial backing for specific parts of the VIP project.
To learn more about these and other OURI supports, check out the following:
If you have specific questions or want more information about OURI support for your research endeavors, contact Danny Gibboney (dg115@rice.edu).