The SRA Symposium - College of Medicine

Table 3: Characteristics of ORD Funding Opportunities
Recipient of an ORD opportunity
Percent
No 68.9
Yes 29.5
No answer 1.6
Recipient of another opportunity
No 50.8
Yes 44.3
No answer 4.9
ORD opportunities relevant
Relevant to my work some of the time 49.2
Not usually relevant to my work 23.0
Relevant to my work all of the time 14.8
No answer 6.6
Not at all relevant to my work 3.3
Other 1.6
Don’t always read them 1.6
Papers
A worrying situation was the statistics on proposal submission (Figure 4). The majority of researchers
(over 70%) indicated that they had never submitted a proposal for funding either prior to or
since 2003. It was mainly Senior Lecturers and Associate Professors who reported on submitting
proposals for external funding. This could have several interpretations, firstly that Lecturers were
inexperienced in grant proposal writing, and therefore did not submit them. Secondly, having
attained the rank of Professors resulted in reduction in effort by the most senior academic staff.
Furthermore, it appeared that grant proposal writing significantly reduced since 2003. Of those staff
members who reported on submitting a proposal for a funding opportunity either before or since
2003, about 50% or more of them had obtained funding. Based on these yield rates, UB academic
staff who apply for funding opportunities appear to be relatively qualified and competitive.
Figure 4: Percent of staff and quantity of proposals submitted for funding before (b)and after (a)
2003
2005 Symposium Proceedings Book 137