Office of Research & Sponsored Programs (ORSP)

Our Role

The university's role in a society is as ever changing as the society itself. Today's universities create new roles and respond to new requests from society. The role of the university is to make a contribution to society in myriad ways in which the academy is uniquely qualified, such as:

• Fundamental research to discover and understand our universe;
• Creative endeavors which frame our consciousness and underscore our humanity;
• Inventing technology in partnership with the private sector; and
• Partnerships with our communities to enhance them economically, socially, politically, and educationally.

 

Within the University of New Orleans, the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) strives to further these goals in several ways. ORSP has both a compliance monitoring role as well as a service role to assist faculty in their acquisition of external funds that further academic pursuits. The compliance role embodies the traditional components of academic research which guarantee its higher level credibility; proper ethics and protection of human subjects; proper animal care and use; scientific integrity; financial integrity; and avoidance of conflicts of interest. The service component of ORSP entails more of a partnership with the faculty in furthering their various research agendas. Some of those components include: providing leadership to small or large groups of faculty on projects requiring partnership with outside resources, assistance in identifying funding sources, announcement of special competitions, assistance and advice in proposal preparation, proposal submission and dealing with the non-financial aspects once an award is secured. All of these services are provided to insure that faculty has an overall positive experience in their pursuit of external funding. Thus, the ORSP provides a partnership role both externally and internally to the University, in numerous ways, all toward the common goals of furthering UNO's overall research agenda and development of a wide array of sponsored programs.

This website is an attempt to provide vital information to facilitate realizing those goals, as well as linkages to personnel who can assist the faculty in all phases of their work. We hope you will take a moment to familiarize yourself with our sitemap; and we look forward to being contacted by all of you within the University community who share these common goals.

Our Rankings

According to the NSF Webcaspar database and our NSF Expenditure Survey for 2009 UNO has three programs in the sciences and social sciences in the top 100 of their discipline: Sociology (#58), Chemistry (#59) and Earth & Environmental Science (#61). These three programs had more research expenditures last year than any other Louisiana university (by discipline). We also had two other programs that were in the top 200 and had more research expenditures than any other Louisiana university: Psychology and Electrical Engineering. Of the 12 engineering, science and social science disciplines listed in the survey UNO was the highest ranked among all (public and private) universities in Louisiana in the 5 listed above. The NSF survey also includes Education funding and we are highest in that as well.

According to the recently submitted NSF Expenditure Survey for 2011, UNO has increased total research expenditures for the fourth straight year. Total and Federal research expenditures increased by 30% over the past two years. UNO had the highest Research Productivity  (federal research expenditures per FTE faculty) of any public university in the state in 2010. With the impending budget cuts at the federal level it may be difficult to continue this trend. However, if we continue to seek external funding we can continue to grow the research enterprise.