Advancing Research

In an era of increasing competition and uncertainty for federal research funding, the Seattle University Office of Research & Sponsored Projects (ORSP) has been awarded a five-year, $2.05 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Growing Research Access for Nationally Transformative Economic Development (GRANTED) program to help transform how teaching-intensive institutions engage in research.

Specifically, the grant funds the project titled, Collaborative, Cultural, and Operational Leadership (COLead): Leading from All Levels Toward Cultural and Operational Research Excellence and Sustainability. The aim is to establish a collaborative model for research leadership that empowers faculty and staff at institutions without a senior leadership position dedicated exclusively to research to build sustainable research and grant-seeking programs.

“This project directly addresses a longstanding gap,” says Jenna Isakson, director of Seattle University’s Office of Research and Sponsored Projects (ORSP) and lead investigator for this grant. “Most teaching-intensive institutions don’t have a dedicated senior administrator, such as a vice provost for research, guiding their vision and strategy. COLead proposes a model where leadership for research excellence comes from collaboration across all levels.”

Leading the project alongside Isakson are ORSP Associate Directors Sarah Bricknell and Dr. Kara Luckey, who serve as co-investigators. Dr. Jen Marrone, professor of management in the Albers School of Business and Economics, serves as senior personnel, consulting on the project’s organizational change and team-based leadership frameworks.

Building Capacity and Community

The COLead initiative is guided by three key “aims.” They are:

• Aim I: Build cultural capacity using a structural collaborative leadership model that provides sustained infrastructure for strategic research and sponsored project leadership resulting in increased capacity for developing, maintaining and executing a strategic vision for seeking out research and grants;
• Aim II: Driven by a collaborative leadership model, increase the capacity of faculty and staff and streamline processes for federal grant-seeking and management through the development of a coordinated and sustainable research infrastructure model; and
• Aim III: Construct a systematic, replicable approach based upon the collaborative leadership and research infrastructure models resulting in an organizational change toolkit that can be adopted by other teaching-intensive institutions in order to grow and sustain grant-seeking and research by leveraging existing resources.

“The toolkit will guide peer institutions … in replicating our collaborative leadership and coordinated research administration infrastructure model to build the cultural capacity necessary to facilitate allocation of sustainable resources that grow and maintain the research and grant-seeking enterprise,” says Isakson.

At Seattle University, the project will establish two key working groups—a Research Leadership Council to drive strategy and a Grants Administration Partners group to improve coordination of award management and processes.

“The grant allows us to think systematically about what it means to lead from all levels,” Isakson says. “We’re creating structures that don’t just work for Seattle University but also can be adapted by other institutions like ours across the country.”

The NSF funding will also support external assessments by the National Organization for Research Development Professionals and the National Council for University Research Administrators, as well as the hiring of a new Associate Director for Post-Award—a role focused on strengthening grant and financial management.

Additionally, two teaching-intensive institutions will be selected through an application process to pilot and refine the COLead model. “These partnerships are essential to ensure the model is practical and scalable,” Isakson explains. “We want this to be a roadmap for institutions that have the passion for research but lack the infrastructure to sustain it.”

A Toolkit for Transformation

Over the five-year project period, SU’s team will document findings and best practices in an Organizational Change Toolkit, which will serve as a comprehensive guide for peer institutions looking to replicate the COLead approach.

The toolkit will include templates for collaborative governance, strategies for engaging leadership at multiple levels and methods for leveraging existing resources to expand research capacity. The outcomes will be shared nationally through conferences, networks and an external-facing project website.

“Whether you’re at a small liberal arts college or a regional public university,” says Isakson, “this toolkit will help facilitate building a culture of research that’s sustainable, strategic and community driven.”

The SU team will ultimately present its findings at major national conferences, such as the Society of Research Administrators International (SRAI), the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) and the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP), as well as through the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) Research Administrators Network.

A Win in a Volatile Funding Landscape

Receiving an NSF award is a milestone achievement for any institution, especially so in today’s uncertain federal funding environment. The ORSP team's bread and butter is helping faculty and staff's grant-seeking so it’s meaningful that the office itself has been awarded this funding.

“The federal funding landscape is extremely volatile right now,” Isakson says. “We submitted the proposal not knowing if the funding would still be available. To receive the first grant award to SU’s research and sponsored project’s office was both surprising and deeply validating. It speaks to the strength and relevance of our proposal.”

Empowering Leadership at All Levels

For Isakson, the award is both a professional milestone and a reflection of how far Seattle University’s ORSP has come since she and her colleagues began working together six years ago.

“We started working together in 2019 at a time when ORSP was recovering from high turnover. We created a new vision focused on celebrating research, supporting our community and serving as a leader for research and grant-seeking,” she says. “This project directly aligns with the third goal and will build upon the momentum we’ve already created.”

The project also reflects the values of Seattle University. “I think it says that SU is a collaborative, empowering environment, recognizing and supporting leadership and new ideas from all levels,” she says. “In this case that means empowering ORSP staff to lead the development of our research and grant strategy through this collaborative leadership model.”

With an average 15 percent annual growth in sponsored project awards over the past five years, SU is already seeing the impact of that momentum. In Fiscal Year 2025 SU received a record 65 awards totaling nearly $11 million. And COLead, says Isakson, “is the next step in that evolution—one designed not just to advance research at Seattle University, but to elevate teaching-intensive institutions across the nation.”

“This project is about sustainability, equity and shared leadership. It’s about helping institutions like ours see that research excellence depends on collaboration.”