Office of Sponsored Research

Our Mission

The Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) at Franklin & Marshall is a hub for facilitating and enhancing the College's engagement with external sponsors and supporting our faculty, researchers, and students to in their pursuit of discoveries and transformative scholarship. We are focused on supporting faculty and student excellence by providing comprehensive support throughout the sponsored program's lifecycle. We are dedicated to creating an environment encouraging creativity, exploration, and the generation of new ideas while ensuring compliance with regulations, promoting ethical practices, and maintaining the highest standards of integrity.

The OSR connects the campus community with funding opportunities from federal, state, and private organizations that offer opportunities supporting the research, scholarly, and creative work of our faculty and their students, and providing support for faculty and staff-led initiatives benefiting our students.

Our office reports directly to the Provost and the Associate Dean of the Faculty and works closely with departments and offices across campus to support faculty research and other projects. The OSR contributes to the F&M mission of providing a transformative liberal arts education to students from diverse backgrounds, helping them to understand the natural, social and cultural worlds in which they live.

Research at F&M by the Numbers

F&M maintains a robust research infrastructure for faculty and students across all disciplines represented at the College. For the period 2019-2024, F&M expended approximately $5.1 million annually in support of faculty and student scholarly activity, placing the College among the top 10% of all arts and science colleges nationally. During the same period of time, F&M faculty averaged nearly $2.12 million annually in awards from public and private sponsors such as the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, the Luce Foundation, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Wellsping Foundation. These funds funds were matched by an additional $2.1 million annually drawn from College endowments and gifts to support faculty and student research. Of that $2.1 million, nearly a quarter went to directly students working on independent or faculty-led research projects spanning the arts, sciences, and humanities.

Resources

The goal of the OSR is provide grant seekers with comprehensive support from ideation through award close-out. The OSR has the expertise to assist faculty and staff at the pre-award stage with budgets and budget justifcations, broader impacts statements, F&M facts and figures, institutional approvals and other proposal components, allowing the aspiring principal investigator or project director to focus on those areas in which they are expert. Post-award, the OSR can assists with rebudgeting, no-cost extensions, subawards, contracts, and many of the other bureaucratic aspects of award management and close-out.

Learn More About Grants & Funding at F&M

F&M is committed to advancing student and faculty research and creativity. Internal funding for new projects is available through the Office of the Provost, while Sponsored Research, College Advancement and the Fellowship Office assist with funding from federal, state, and non-profit organizations.

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