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External Awards at Texas A&M-Kingsville Reach $20 Million

KINGSVILLE (October 21, 2009) — External awards mean a lot to a university.
What are external awards? They include grants for research, and awards received to fund educational and career-focused student programs.

From September 1, 2007 to August 30, 2008, Texas A&M University-Kingsville received $13.7 million in external awards. In the year that followed, external awards rose more than six million dollars, to over $20 million. That’s the highest amount of external funding ever received by the university.

Out of the 45 institutions in Texas that engage in research, A&M-Kingsville ranks 13th in the state in terms of expenditures. Texas A&M-Kingsville also is the first institution in the Texas A&M System outside of College Station to reach the $20 million award amount.

“When a university reaches a mark like $20 million in external awards, it affirms that the university is achieving a level of excellence,” said Dr. Steven H. Tallant, president of Texas A&M-Kingsville. “Our campus community—students, faculty, staff and administrators—is demonstrating time and again to agencies at all levels that our programs are worth supporting.

“The increase in funding represents the positive changes that are happening at Texas A&M-Kingsville. We have administrators and educators of the highest caliber joining our proven team of leaders in higher education. Their determination to build successful academic programs is the reason the university earned these external awards and I applaud their success. I also want to thank the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs for its assistance in finding these funds and helping faculty and staff craft effective proposals.”

The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) at A&M-Kingsville supports the faculty and staff in acquiring and administering external grants for research and other sponsored projects, and it ensures compliance with all the applicable regulations and requirements. Its director, Sandra D. Garcia, noted a concerted effort on the part of her office to help make that research expenditure figure grow over the last year.

“We made it a point to offer premiere customer service. Our office reviews proposals, edits for any discrepancies and makes every effort to get the proposals submitted to the sponsor in a timely manor, to ensure deadlines are met.”

Those efforts are reflected by the fact that faculty and staff proposals for external funds were up ten percent over the last year, at 192 total submissions equaling $78 million.

“It’s the faculty and staff that bring in the funds. It’s their hard work and dedication to the university and to our students that make the programs successful,” reminded Garcia. “We’re just the facilitators.”

Next year, Garcia said she would like to see external funds go up by ten percent again. The ORSP plans to have what Garcia termed a very aggressive workshop schedule, to maximize learning opportunities for faculty and staff.

In addition, Garcia would like to see more research projects between the university and state and local agencies similar to ones in effect with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of University Partnerships, and the Kingsville Independent School District.