Funded jointly by the MSU Foundation and MSU colleges, the Strategic Partnership Grants (SPG) Program is an important funding mechanism to support promising new initiatives in key areas of research, scholarship and multidisciplinary collaboration. A successful SPG concept would be of sufficient caliber that it would achieve several of the following aspirations:
- Create a nexus of national/international research preeminence that will raise the stature of the university, significantly differentiating MSU from its peers.
- Promote productive and sustained research collaboration and productivity among faculty that, without this funding, would otherwise not occur.
- Promote work that is high risk, high return, with a potential for high reputational benefit.
- Position MSU faculty to compete successfully for significant external funding by creating a path to sustainability of the research endeavor; builds a bridge to a future, not a project that ends at the end of the SPG funding.
- Promote the development of research ideas with significant (long term) commercial potential and/or broad community or global impact.
The SPG program enables such opportunities by supporting research and scholarship that is leading-edge, interdisciplinary, and capitalizes on the existing intellectual and research resources at Michigan State University. The SPG program advances MSU Foundation’s mission to provide grant funding for the development of new knowledge, to lay the groundwork for centers of excellence at the university, and to invest in the development of Michigan State University as one of the nation's leading research institutions. Managed by the Office of Research and Innovation (OR&I), proposals for new and innovative research initiatives are solicited annually in a two-stage review process (preliminary proposals and invited full proposals). Up to five applications will be submitted for review by the MSU Foundation in June of each year.
Eligibility
The SPG program is open to multidisciplinary or multi-institutional PI teams comprised of:
- Full time tenured and tenure-track faculty
- Faculty with uninterrupted, multi-year, fixed term appointments in academic departments (faculty with visiting or adjunct appointments are not eligible)
- Faculty with one-year appointments who obtain written confirmation from their departmental chair that they will be appointed through the duration of the grant (letters from the chair should be attached to the faculty’s CV and uploaded under the PI/Co-PI Information tab).
- Academic specialists in the continuing appointment system who have the majority of their effort in the research category (the term "faculty" in this RFP includes these specialists)
Click here for more information on the funding opportunity or to apply
