In FY23 (Year 2), the University of Iowa is distributing $15 million in P3 funding to eight projects. 

The approved projects were selected through a two-stage process that involved a call for preliminary applications, followed by an invitation to select projects to submit full proposals. The UI Strategy Team (ST) received 33 preliminary applications and invited eight projects to submit full proposals.  Following some revisions, all eight applications were recommended to President Wilson, who approved all eight to be put forward to the P3 Board, along with additional funding for the High Impact Hiring Initiative Proposal, for a total of $15 million.  The P3 Board approved the following projects at their May meeting:

Pathways to Success: Ensuring High Quality Career Development for Every Hawkeye

To provide high quality, tailored career development for every student, there is a need for a robust technological solution that addresses inequities in career pathway preparation by delivering traditional services in non-traditional ways. This project entails a unique, accessible, and integrated platform that motivates students to engage in ongoing and personalized career development. It will help to level the playing field for underrepresented students by broadening access to high impact career practices such as career advice and career planning assistance.  Funded amount: $407,040 over three years.

External Job Placement Services for Partners of Recruited Faculty and Select Senior-Level Staff

Colleges report that when recruiting faculty and senior-level staff into priority areas and hard-to-fill positions, deans and other staff expend considerable effort researching and connecting with external employers to assist in the job placement of partners. While the university currently offers dual career services, an external job placement service would allow the university to leverage experts for whom this is a core business function while also conserving resources and promoting consistency across campus. This effort will support multiple strategic initiatives. Funded amount: $315,000 over three years.

Midwest FLASH Lab: Developing Next-Generation Radiotherapy Delivery and Expertise at the UI

Fifty percent of cancer patients receive conventional radiation therapy. Initial research suggests that radiation delivered much more rapidly, in milliseconds as opposed to minutes, can spare normal tissues significantly while maintaining cancer control. The establishment of the Midwest FLASH Lab--a self-sustaining research, technology development, and training laboratory--will make the UI a destination for ultra-high dose-rate radiation therapy (FLASH) science and training in the U.S. The project will leverage significant existing UI resources and grow the funded NIH research portfolio substantially, in addition to attracting talented faculty and student researchers and scholars. Funded amount: $3 million over three years.

High Impact Hiring Initiative (HIHI):  A Program to Strategically Recruit and Retain Talented Faculty

Building a campus community that is talented, inclusive, and rich in diversity of backgrounds and perspectives is fundamental to the university’s mission of excellence in teaching and research. Since its inception in March of 2021, the HIHI program has provided funds towards the strategic hiring and retention of 25 high-performing faculty in seven colleges. The success of the HIHI program has had measurable impact across all strategic priority areas. The expansion of the program to include strategic recruitments in areas of excellence will have an even greater impact on educational and research programs that make Iowa distinct, and will further enhance the university’s welcoming and inclusive environment. Funded amount: $7.5 million over two years.

Higher Education Mental Health

Mental health issues remain a serious concern on higher education campuses around the country, and data indicate that those in the UI community experience higher levels of distress than the national average. Increased mental health issues lead to student attrition, employee burnout, academic failure, and reduced faculty and staff productivity. This project will develop and implement interventions to address mental health issues for faculty, staff, and students. The program will rely on recent, research-based models spanning efforts focused on prevention, intervention, and postvention. Funded amount: $700,000 over three years.

Support for Mid-Career Faculty

This project will provide targeted support to select mid-career tenured faculty through a competitive, peer-reviewed, outcomes-oriented process to reinvigorate or redirect productivity. It will provide tenured associate professors with tailored career development support to ensure their successful career renewal or redirection, propel them towards promotion to full professor, and position them for a future as productive senior faculty. Funded amount: $2 million over three years.

Excellence in Teaching and Learning:  Developing a Set of Effective Strategies for Course and Curriculum Innovation (ETL)

Building off the success of the Hawkeye Introductory Course project, this project centralizes efforts to improve student outcomes and narrow equity gaps in key introductory STEM courses and course sequences, with the long-term goal of improving student retention and graduation rates.  The project has the potential to impact thousands of students across all undergraduate colleges who need these courses to persist, complete their major, and graduate.  The focus on decreasing inequitable gaps in student outcomes will also affect systemic barriers that have traditionally led to loss of valuable diversity in UI graduates and workforce. Additionally, the project will continue to facilitate critical institutional change around student academic success, and will serve as a catalyst for emerging institutional strategic priorities relating to excellence in teaching and learning.  Finally, the project is expected to result in a set of tested interventions that departments can use in course redesign and curricular reforms. Funded amount: $477,960 over two years.

Redox Regulation of Immunological Responses During Cancer Therapy Using Novel Redox Active Molecule Approaches that Both Enhance Anti-Tumor Immune Responses and Limit Normal Tissue Injury

This project will obtain preliminary data and establish new cross-college collaborations to enable the development of a new National Cancer Institute (NCI) P50 SPORE grant or a new NCI P01 program project grant in lung cancer. It will capitalize on current collaborations to build a team to conduct a small clinical trial to examine the impact of pharmacological ascorbate for the first time in early-stage lung cancer; it will also be the first time ascorbate will be combined with immunotherapy.  If successful, the P50 SPORE and/or P01 grant will substantially impact research and discovery at the UI by enhancing its ability to identify novel treatments for lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death. Funded amount: $600,000 over two years.

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