Undergraduate research short on funding in some departments

Undergraduate research, something USD students have participated in for decades, is currently faced with funding shortages in some departments, in part because of a new administrative budgeting model.

Sarah Wittmuss, director of USD’s Center for Academic and Global Engagement (CAGE), said this is unfortunate because undergraduate research is beneficial to both students and the university.

“Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice in higher education research,” Wittmuss said. “It makes students get better GPAs, they retain at higher rates, they graduate sooner – they have all kinds of positive outcomes.”

The university’s new budgeting model, called RCM (Responsibility-Centered Management), is a less-centralized approach to budget management that divides research funding between colleges. The RCM model was implemented by the university sometime in the past few years.

RCM has been one factor which has recently shaken up undergraduate research, said Shane Nordyke, associate professor of political science, director of USD’s Government Research Bureau (GRB) and a member of CURCS (Council for Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship).

CURCS is the campus organization which deals with funding for undergraduate research projects.

“It (RCM) affected a lot of funding things all over campus,” Nordyke said. “… and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs wasn’t able to give us money that they had previously contributed.”

This change, Nordyke and Wittmuss said, led to certain colleges having restricted funds available to give applicants for research funding, while other schools had more than was necessary and didn’t use all the funds available.

“If we don’t have students apply from certain colleges and schools, that money will go unallocated,” Wittmuss said.

Wittmuss said in the past CURCS drew from four funding sources: the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, the Provost, the General Activity Fee committee and the deans of various colleges.

This multi-source approach to funding was necessary because of the large number of applications, Wittmuss said.

“Part of the challenge that CURCS has had in the past several years is that we regularly run out of funding because we have so many excellent applications from students and projects we want to support,” Nordyke said. “The struggle that we’re having to make sure we have enough to support all applications isn’t a new one.”

Nordyke said this year presented a new set of challenges in getting funding.

“The new struggle this year was just that we had certain types of funding we were able to pull from the past that we weren’t able to (this year),” she said.

To help bridge the gap, Nordyke said CURCS has approached the deans of various colleges to ask for funding to support research. They were willing to help, she said, but some colleges ran out of money before others.

Both Wittmuss and Nordyke said the reason for this is because certain colleges tend to have a considerable amount of undergraduate research applications, while others have comparably few.

As funding has declined, the overall number of undergraduates who’ve applied for research funding has also: down from 39 applications by this time last year to 25 applications this year, Wittmuss and Nordyke said.

“It’s hard to say why applications are down,” Nordyke said. “But we had seen a steady increase for every year in the past four years.”

The pair suggested that financial issues may be partly to blame for the decline in applications, because receiving funding has become more difficult.

Prior to the changes, Wittmuss said, the faculty committees of CURCS were fairly generous in their reviewing of research funding applications.

“They looked very favorably towards every application that came,” she said.

Back then, even if the committee received “an application that wasn’t completely up to snuff,” the faculty would generally encourage the applicant to revise and resubmit the application, after which they would usually choose to fund the project.

“With all of these new restrictions and fewer funds this year, the faculty on CURCS have felt like they have to be a lot more judicious with how they’re spending their money,” Wittmuss said. “That has resulted in the decrease in the students who have been funded.”

Kit Asfeldt, a senior theatre major and recipient of CURCS funding for creative scholarship, spoke positively of his experiences.

“I think the great thing about undergraduate research is that it really forces students to think for themselves and apply what they’re learning in their undergraduate education to whatever they’re specifically interested in,” Asfeldt said.

Asfeldt traveled with senior biology major Elizabeth Berg to Pierre on Tuesday to present their undergraduate research in the Capitol building.

“It’s really important because it allows these undergraduate students to start doing what they’re probably going to be doing in their career fields after they graduate,” Asfeldt said.