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The Art of Grantsmanship
Lessons learned from a banner year in grantsmanship at the College of Agriculture
By Charlie Morrison
When the dust finally settled on Tennessee State University’s (TSU) 2022-2023 fiscal year, the faculty, staff and administrators dedicated to the school’s pursuit of grant monies knew that they had accomplished something. They’d made a mark that year, like never before. And when the accountants finally put their calculators down, the figures bore that feeling out. It had been a banner year for TSU in terms of grant monies awarded, a record year.
TSU brought in over $100 million in grants in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, a figure that establishes the University as a powerhouse in research among the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The figure places TSU in a great position to achieve its goal of getting to the $150 million per year in grant monies mark within the next five years.
If the University can hit that goal, it will have satisfied the grant monies raised component of the coveted Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Learning’s “R1” designation, which if acquired would place TSU in the top tier of the nation’s research universities. TSU’s current R2 status makes it elite among HBCUs but pushing to R1 would place the University in the top echelon of universities period.
Powering TSU’s push to the $150 million mark is the College of Agriculture (TSUAg), the most prolific of the school’s nine colleges in acquiring grant funding. In 2022-2023, TSUAg brought in approximately $47 million. Figures like that establish the fact that TSUAg Dean Dr. Chandra Reddy and the team at the College of Agriculture have truly mastered the art of grantsmanship.
The Big Get
In 2022-2023, the big get for TSUAg’s research funding program was the effort led by Dr. John Ricketts to capture some $18.1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (USDA NIFA) $262.5 million “NextGen” grant program. The NextGen grant will fund full scholarships including tuition, room and board, books and other expenses for scores of students over the next five years.
In addition, there are a slew of new programs and opportunities available to students in agriculture that owe their existence to the NextGen grant, including research programs, study abroad programs, internships, even scholarships for high school students to enroll in the TSU Extension’s New Farmer Academy.
The NextGen grant represents perhaps the largest single grant award a member of the College of Agriculture faculty has ever secured on behalf of the school and its students. According to Ricketts, one of the keys to successful grantsmanship is first to simply find the right grant opportunities to apply for.
“It was made for us, it was made for me. I study people. We’ve put a lot of time and energy and effort into student development here at the University,” says Dr. Ricketts. “I used to tell people they don’t have that kind of money for agriculture education, that money is for hard sciences, and then we see this grant and it’s right up our alley. It was a really incredible opportunity.”
And while the NextGen grant serves as the headline-getting grant of the 20222023 fiscal year, it was far from the only grant of significant size TSUAg faculty drove to the University. In the banner year for grantsmanship that it was, a wide group of College of Agriculture faculty made strong contributions.
Dr. Karla Addesso secured a grant for just under $2.4 million, Dr. Melanie Cantu acquired a USDA grant for just over $2 million, Dr. Sonali Roy contributed with a $1.1 million grant and Drs. Jianwei Li, De’Etra Young and Hongwei Si each acquired million-dollar grants. And the list goes on.
A Team and its Leader
For evidence that successful grantsmanship takes a team, look no further than the small army of faculty members who are working together on executing the NextGen grant program. Along with
Ricketts, TSUAg Dean Dr. Chandra Reddy and the Associate Dean, Dr. Young, who are serving as co-project directors, faculty involved in this project include Drs. Alyssa Rockers, Brione Lockett, LaPorchia Davis, Thomas Broyles, Yujuan Chen, Pramir Maharjan, Dilip Nandwani, Agnes Kilonzo-Nthenge and Samuel Nahashon.
The team approach at the College of Agriculture extends much farther than executing the grants, however, it is part of the application process. That said, every team needs a leader, and when it comes to grant applications, the leader of the team at TSUAg is Dr. Fulya Baysal-Gurel.
Dr. Baysal-Gurel, the College’s Associate Dean for Research (Interim) and a Research Associate Professor, coordinates both individual faculty members’ and interdisciplinary teams’ grant applications, often pairing faculty members from different disciplines together to form teams to ensure TSUAg puts its best foot forward.
“My role involves introducing (the faculty researchers) to the opportunities,” says Dr. Baysal-Gurel. “In the situation of a competitive grant, if we believe, Dr. Reddy and myself, that we have the potential partners in our institution, we introduce them to each other and say, ‘This is an opportunity just recently announced.’ When we believe we have enough capacity of the faculty to address the multidisciplinary aspect of that application we say, ‘Let’s bring this team together.’”
A Competitive Environment
According to Dr. Ricketts, Dr. Baysal-Gurel’s role is critical in creating a competitive environment that’s internal to TSUAg. The large faculty body at the College ensures that multiple candidates can typically apply for the same grants; the size of the faculty body begets competition within the College, which in turn brings out the best in individual grant applicants.
“There’s an internal process there, that process is led by Dr. Baysal-Gurel. She’ll put an open call out to all the professors and the professors will compete for the right to apply,” says Dr. Ricketts. “There are limits on the number of applications that can be submitted from each university, in the case of the NextGen grant, there were only three spots. So many people wanted to lead it, lead different pieces of it, that we had to have that internal competition to see whose application we’d submit.”
With respect to the NextGen grant, TSUAg could only submit three projects, one for each category of grant funding available. They submitted one for $5 million, another for $10 million and a third $20 million project.
“It usually comes down to the quality of the proposal. It’s a screen so we get the best three projects but it’s also a way to pick who could the three be because, as you could imagine, a lot of people thought they wanted to go for that kind of money,” continues Ricketts. “After we knew in earnest who the three proposals were going to be from, then there is the process of getting it to the deadline.”
A Diversity of Disciplines
The art of grantsmanship at a research-focused college like TSUAg, according to Dr. Baysal-Gurel, involves putting together the individual pieces into a collective whole, placing individual faculty researchers in collaboration with one another to acquire big, multidisciplinary grants. In this sense, the size of the more than 70-member faculty body at the College is a boon to the school’s prospects when it comes to grants.
“The advantage we have here at the College when it comes to competitive grant applications is that we have multidisciplinary teams here. We have the topnotch experts here, every faculty member comes with a great background,” says Dr. Baysal-Gurel.
“Our role is bringing them together and creating a nice, collaborative environment in which we support each other, that makes us different when it comes to competitive grants, that’s what makes for a strong team.”
Doing Right by the Funds
The art of grantsmanship really comes into play for TSUAg administrators and faculty after the funds hit TSU accounts as well. Grant funds are only useful when spent after all, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Programs built around grant monies need meticulous management. Large projects like the Dr. Ricketts-led NextGen project require dedicated hires to assist with project management.
In Dr. Ricketts’ case, he’s hired a project manager, a student engagement/recruitment coordinator and a project coordinator. He’s bringing in a small team to handle the job of account management, basically to make sure the money is spent the right way not only at TSU but at each of the 10 other partnering institutions that were written into the grant as well. Accounts have to be set up with the University, contracts with partners are necessary and there are even ethical hoops that must be jumped through in executing grant programs. It’s a lot, just ask Dr. Ricketts.
“It’s like running a small business, but unlike a business where you’re trying to save as much as you can, you must spend the money on the business,” he says. “My concern is if we’re holding $3 million at the end of five years, we’re going to look bad.”
For Dr. Quincy Quick, Associate Vice President of Research and Sponsored Programs and Chief Research Officer at TSU, the job of managing grant-funded programs and in effect spending the money is a job made easier by the fact that Dr. Reddy is providing leadership on the topic.
“Dr. Reddy has done an excellent job leading the charge because just because somebody’s going to give you money doesn’t mean you’re going to do the right thing with it,” says Quick. “He has been productive with it, his team has been productive with it and we’re happy for what they’ve done.”
For Dr. Quick, the College of Agriculture serves as a leader at TSU in terms of grantsmanship, productivity and research. “Agriculture is the model here at the institution for the other colleges to follow,” he says. “They hit all of the criteria that Carnegie would be looking for, doctoral output, research expenditures and the number of non-faculty researchers. They are leading the charge in many respects at the institution.”
