Fall 2007 Call for Shared Facilities Proposals

Deadline: Friday, October 26, 2007
Grantees will be notified no later than Friday, November 30

Quick Links:
Proposal Guidelines for Submission
Proposal Format
Submitting a Proposal
Proposal Cover Page

On behalf of Brad Moore and the Shared Facilities Advisory Committee, I am pleased to inform you that funds are available to support shared and core facilities. The Committee will review and prioritize requests that will improve the operation and breadth of current facilities or for improvements and modifications that will increase the probability of securing additional external funding. Applicants may request funds for equipment, instrumentation, and/or operating costs. Generally speaking, the Committee will consider well justified requests for funding up to $75,000. You are encouraged to contact Holly Falk-Krzesinski, Director, Office for Research Development at 847-491-1074 or h-falk@northwestern.edu in advance to discuss your request if you have not participated in this competition in the past.

The deadline to submit proposals in response to this call is close of business Friday, October 26, 2007.

To be eligible for funds through the Office for Research, the following criteria must be met:

  • The facility does/will serve at least three principal investigators, generally representing more than a single department.
  • A faculty users' committee, which meets on a regular basis, must oversee the facility. All members of the users' committee must sign the proposal and indicate that they agree with its contents. Proposals that do not include these signatures will not be reviewed.
  • Each facility must submit an annual report that summarizes the facility's income for the year from user charges, university sources and grants, expenditures, names of departments of principal investigators who have used the facility, its self-evaluation efforts, and attempts to promote University-wide utilization. The outline of the budget of the Facility must be as accurate as possible and be approved by the responsible financial manager of the unit. If a shared facility received funds from this committee during the academic years 2001-2007, this must be indicated.

Proposal Format
Review of the proposals will be facilitated if all applicants follow a common format. Applications must adhere to the format outlined in this announcement. This outline offers suggestions for providing appropriate information, although it recognizes that not all sections will be relevant to all facilities. The total application should not exceed eight (8) pages, excluding the cover sheet, tabulated list of users and user fees. Each major heading of the outline should be addressed at least briefly in the proposal. Applicants must compile all of their documents into a single, contiguous PDF file (using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or higher or an equivalent PDF file converter program). The margins should be one inch on all sides. Use no less than 11 point Times New Roman or equivalent font and single line spacing. Save the file using a file name that includes the facility name.

All applications must contain a scanned version of the cover page (see below) with the names and signatures of each member of the faculty users' committee as its first page. Letters of support should be included at the end of the document.

Applications must be uploaded electronically, as a single PDF to the Depot server described in the "Submitting the proposal" section below. The deadline for submission is close of business Friday, October 26, 2007.

Proposal Guidelines for Submission to Shared Facilities Competition

I. Description of the facility

Describe services of the facility and how they differ from services available outside NU. Address the importance of these services to research activity at NU. Outline the management of the facility and its reporting structure. Identify the composition of the user committee and methods used to assess user satisfaction.

II. Users of the facility

Priority will generally be given to facilities with the broadest user base that represents multiple schools or departments at NU. Please provide an annual users list, keyed to individual faculty members. If the facility runs on a flat annual fee basis, the list should include all faculty members who subscribe and how much they paid for the services. If the facility runs on a charge-for-service basis, please provide a table that documents in detail hours used and charges assessed to faculty members using the facility. The following table indicates the required format for this information:

User Faculty
Advisor only		 CUFS #
Used		 Service Hours
Used		 Amount Charged

Additionally, provide the total number of service hours and the total number of dollars collected per annum for the entire facility and for the particular piece of equipment requested, if you are requesting an upgrade or replacement for this piece of equipment. If the budget information is not supplied in the requested format, with appropriate details, your proposal will not be reviewed.

III. Financial background

Provide a detailed summary of all income and expenditures of the facility, listing all contributions from departments, schools, administrators, other units at NU, and/or external sources.

IV. Current request

Describe and fully justify the basis of the current request. Generally speaking, the Committee will consider well justified requests for funding up to $75,000. You are encouraged to contact Holly Falk-Krzesinski, Director, Office for Research Development at 847-491-1074 or h-falk@northwestern.edu in advance to discuss your request if you have not participated in this competition in the past. Provide quotations from a manufacturer or supplier, or identify the price as listed in a manufacturer's catalog. It will be very helpful to the committee in its evaluation of the proposal if supporting letters from faculty members who endorse the request are appended to the application. These should give detailed specifics on how a research program will benefit from the requested piece of equipment. The letter should state for which projects the equipment will be used and should give an estimate of the number of hours that it will be used per annum; letters from graduate and postdoctoral students are unacceptable. Please do not include a petition with the signatures of potential users.

V. Rationale for internal support

Address the availability of resources outside NU, or through facility users' fees. Discuss efforts planned to increase future income and cost recover by the facility.

VI. Submitting the proposal

Go to the following Depot server link to upload your Fall 2007 Shared Facilities proposal as a single PDF file*: https://depot.northwestern.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-3799057_1-t_4PWNtxkw;

  • Click on the Upload button on the toolbar;
  • Type in your file name directly or use the Browse feature to find the file on your hard drive;
  • Click Ok;
  • Your file is now uploaded, although you will not receive a confirmation message.
  • The deadline for submission is close of business Friday, October 26, 2007.

The deadline for submission is close of business Monday, April 2, 2007.

* You will be uploading your file to a directory called:
/projects/office-research-development/Shared_Facilities_Competitions/Shared_Facilities_Fall_2007

The Shared Facilities Advisory Committee was formed in response to a 1994 task force that pointed to the critical role shared services can play in enhancing the research environment at Northwestern. The Office of Research has developed and maintained a comprehensive summary of shared and core facilities, which is available on the web at http://www.research.northwestern.edu/facilities/. The Committee will continue to advise the Vice President for Research on any improvements that should be made to these entries, so comments on or corrections to the current information will be useful and appreciated; please send them to Holly Falk-Krzesinski at h-falk@northwestern.edu.

Proposal Cover Page

Downloadable Microsoft Word document of the following.

Shared Facilities Funding Application – Fall, 2007

This cover page, or a facsimile, must be used as the first page for ALL applications for Shared Facilities Funding

Date of application:

Contact person:

Department/Center:

Telephone:

Email:

Project team members:

Amount requested: $

Name of piece equipment requested:

Have you received Shared Facilities funding in the past? Yes   No
If yes, please provide a detailed statement of when the award(s) was made and how much money was awarded for what item – please be specific:

Members and signatures of the faculty users’ committee

Printed Name and Signature