The Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs (WRI) was established by Rutgers University at its Camden Campus to honor the late Senator Walter Rand. The Institute addresses public policy issues impacting Southern New Jersey through applied research, community engagement and organizational development. We seek to improve the wellbeing of residents in Southern New Jersey by marshaling the University’s intellectual and professional resources. Through our applied work, we further the Rutgers-Camden strategic goals of community engagement. Our primary areas of focus are population health, criminal justice and public safety, and organizational and community development.
Walter Rand Institute Faculty Scholars
Overview. WRI Faculty Scholars function as traditional principal investigators on grants or contracts that can be initiated either by WRI or by a faculty member.
Faculty-initiated grants. Where there are areas of overlapping interest, we encourage faculty to use WRI as the submitting unit on grants. In this case, faculty receive several benefits: access to WRI staff help in grant-writing, budget preparation, submission, and administration; student/staff help in data collection and analysis; access to WRI’s community partners. In these cases, the Chancellor’s office has waived a portion of its F&A so that both WRI and the department will receive F&A. This means there is no departmental cost for submitting a grant through WRI. As with other faculty-initiated grants, faculty compensation would be decided during the budgeting process by the faculty member.
WRI-initiated grants. At times, WRI applies for grants where it would be ideal for a faculty member to function as PI. In such cases, we reach out to faculty with the appropriate skill set to ask for their collaboration. Staffing of such projects varies, and can include WRI staff and students or students from the PIs department. Compensation to faculty depends on the size and scope of the project, but can include summer salary and/or course release. Faculty are expected to function in a traditional PI role, including scientific oversight, supervising IRB (although WRI staff write and complete the IRB forms), managing research team members, and supervising and in some cases completing data analysis. Contracts/grants with funders are written such that faculty are free to use data from such projects for their own academic purposes. In addition to the traditional PI responsibilities, most WRI-initiated projects will include the responsibility of interacting with the external stakeholder funding the project, including overseeing the writing of any concluding or interim reports and presenting results.
Process and Responsibilities: For WRI-initiated grants, faculty responsibilities and compensation will be agreed upon in a letter signed by the Faculty Director and the faculty member.
Walter Rand Institute Faculty Consultants
Overview: At times, WRI receives grants or contacts that would benefit from additional content or skill expertise from a faculty member. For example, we might apply for funding with a nonprofit as an evaluator of a program, and we want to consult with a faculty member who has content expertise in that program area. Alternatively, in the process of analyzing data for a project, staff members might realize they need to learn a new statistical technique. At other times, we work with community stakeholders who would like to learn about something outside of our areas of expertise. In these cases, we could use faculty help.
Compensation: Faculty compensation will vary with time commitment. For very short conversations, we hope that building a relationship and furthering the campus mission of community engagement will be sufficient compensation. For more involved consultations or speaking, we have funds approved from the Chancellor’s office for additional compensation/honoraria. For ongoing projects with substantial and regular time commitments (e.g. semester or year-long projects), the Chancellor’s office has approved funds for summer salary and/or (with your department’s permission) course release.
Process and Responsibilities: Faculty responsibilities and compensation will be agreed upon in writing by the Faculty Director and the faculty member before the start of the consultation.
Walter Rand Institute Faculty Consultants
Preview: Faculty who have collaborated with WRI and are familiar with our work are eligible to apply for a year-long appointment as WRI’s Scholar-In-Residence. It is anticipated that 2019-2020 will be the inaugural year for the scholar-in-residence. The scholar-in-residence will receive two course releases for the academic year. The scholar-in-residence will be expected to spend the equivalent of one day per week in an office at WRI, and serve as a general-purpose consultant and help across multiple WRI projects. Specific activities will depend on the faculty member’s skill and content expertise, but scholars-in-residence are expected to learn actively about multiple projects and seek to aid the completion of those projects in creative ways.
Application Process
We invite interested faculty to send the application to the Faculty Director (Sarah Allred, srallred@camden.rutgers.edu) for more information.
Feel free to use any of the following documents :