ID275 Institute Mini Research Fellowships

The Idea

The current funding landscape requires a more flexible and agile working environment for research staff. The shift towards fewer, larger grants available requires research staff to focus and build bigger applications which take significant time and investment. Keele has the lowest research time allocation amongst the Research+ group of universities – and would have to double our capacity to draw bottom. A blanket increase in research time allocation would be expensive and un-focused, especially for senior academics. 
 
We propose investing in teaching fellow positions in order to free up 0.2 FTE research time for institute mini fellowships for a preliminary 1-year duration. We propose these being batched together to create cohorts with a joint focus i.e. 1 TF = 5 MFs around a core research theme to support, based on research strategy. We will provide a tailored support package for successful candidates, enabling their professional and personal development and maximising their chances of success. These awards would give researchers at Keele a much-needed competitive boost, help with staff retention, and foster a more collegiate research environment. This would elevate research at Keele, and provide a framework for focusing and refining our research ambitions.

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

The mini fellowship proposal would be a delivery mechanism to facilitate achieve aims and objectives of the university, as well as a strengthen research culture. For example, Keele has a long term strategic need to boost our EPSRC income to reach the threshold required for direct funding for PhD studentships and equipment. A cohort of 5 academics driving forward EPSRC grants for a year would provide significant resource to achieve this goal and boost research in this priority area. 

How We Would Implement This Idea

Invest in 2 Teaching fellow positions to buyout research staff to initiate research projects and submit grants. This would allow 10 mini fellowships to allocate 0.2 FTE for 1 year for defined project aims. 0.2 FTE for a year is enough to meaningfully impact a workload and allow delivery on: research grants, manuscripts, REF impact cases, patents etc. The mini fellowships would be awarded on the applicants’ research vision, and the research priorities of the Institute and wider university research strategy for short / long term. 2 TFs would cost £100k, and release £185-221k equivalent of senior staff time towards research. 

We would welcome the opportunity to run these proposals through a few focus groups to canvas opinions and perspectives on how this would work in practice. This would consult on timescales, assessment criteria, and formulate a working plan for how to deliver these mini fellowships. A rough potential budget and timescale would aid in these discussions. A 1-year test cycle might not enable us to fully capture the return of investment. As suggested by Peter, a 3-year trial run would test this in the real world, and allow us to assess if this is an appropriate mechanism for driving forward research at Keele. A rough idea of the number of teaching fellow positions available would also help scope the potential range of these mini fellowships. 1-2 TF positions might only allow an individual institute to trail run this scheme, and therefore limit the scale of initial testing. 

What Success Would Look Like

10 mini fellows submitting 2-3 grants each should result in grant income sufficient to recoup the cost of the initial investment, allowing the mini fellowship scheme to self-sustain and expand. This would be a demonstrator for investment into research, and showcase focusing research into institutes for more focused, impactful, and competitive research. Success would enable this idea to be expanded and developed into a model for institutes to financially sustain larger staff research FTE. Competitive applications for mini fellowships should help rejuvenate mid and senior academics to re-engage with research, which do not have the opportunities available for ECR staff.