“In response, I said we would be enhancing the faculty’s external grant support across all University disciplines and escalating USC’s participation in the economic development of the state,” Pastides said.

“With the introduction of an innovative new electronic research proposal system and a major reorganization of our research administrative units, we’re delivering on that.”

As one part of the reorganization, the Research and Health Sciences division has created a new economic development office with Anthony Boccanfuso, formerly managing director of the Offi ce of Sponsored Programs and Research, as its new director.

“The Office of Economic Development (OED) was specifi cally designed to coordinate activities with economic development agencies at the municipal, county, and state levels,” Pastides said. “OED also oversees USC businessLINK, our new outreach program for business and industry that includes intellectual property management, industrial agreements, the USC Columbia Technology Incubator, the USC Small Business Development Center, and the Center for Manufacturing and Technology.”

“As the state’s flagship university, USC has much to offer the business and economic development communities, especially with regard to projects and situations that dovetail with our research enterprise and expertise,” Boccanfuso said. “With USC businessLINK, we’ve aggressively streamlined their access to support from the University while simultaneously providing our faculty with proposal development services they need to prepare the most competitive research proposals possible.”

The introduction of an innovative technology initiative—a Web-based system called USCERA (USC Electronic Research Administration, see related story on page 1)—is also focused on enhancing faculty scholarship and external grant support across all disciplines, Pastides said.

USCERA’s technological innovation is being enhanced by the organizational restructuring of the former Offi ce of Sponsored Programs and Research. Renamed the Office of Sponsored Project Support (SPS), it will be directed by Ed Walton with Steve Etheredge managing pre-award services. SPS will provide faculty support for research proposal and human subject application submissions and maintenance of research grant accounts.

“We’re also working to establish collaborations with Tony Huggins and Contract and Grant Accounting to remove barriers between academic departments, pre-award administration, and post-award accounting,” Pastides said. “Our goal is to provide faculty with one person to call for support and problem resolution.

“A faculty steering committee, co-chaired by Mike Wargovich and Lucia Pirisi-Creek, will work with Ed and me to ensure SPS meets faculty needs and that we incorporate faculty support improvement opportunities as these arise.”

He added that the approach will “enable us to provide college specific faculty one-stop support” from proposal submission through project performance to the close-out of the award, “so the faculty member can focus on the important work at hand and not be unnecessarily distracted by the administration.”

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