Colorado State University is committed to supporting a wide range of activities across research, scholarship, and creative activity that advance the goals and success of the university. The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) will utilize this Strategic Investment Program for a wide range of requests (see allowable) from colleges, departments, and other units to increase capacity and accelerate research success. This process is intended to ensure broad institutional alignment, structured allocation of available funds across the fiscal year, and maximized return on investments.

Description:

The OVPR Strategic Investment Program (formerly Quarterly Strategic Investment) will provide funding broadly across the institution to strategically maximize momentum and drive our research enterprise forward to greater recognized excellence by addressing gaps, deficiencies, or opportunities. Continued growth and the accelerated ability to pursue new opportunities in an evolving funding landscape remains as a high OVPR priority. As such, this program will foster a heightened ability to thrive and pivot by supporting activities that increase capacity, increase collaboration, seed new pathways, and maintain a strong foundation of extramural funding.

Requests through this mechanism will need to be explicit about why funds are needed, with a clear link to growth or opportunity (e.g., identified follow-on funding and/or partnership opportunities). In addition, requests must address alignment with institutional strengths and college priority areas.

As with previous iterations of this program, this mechanism will synchronize the submission of requests to the OVPR, but it will now be aligned with academic semesters (fall, spring, summer). Through these cycles, the OVPR hopes to be able to strategically assess funding needs across larger pools of proposals across the fiscal year while lowering alignment and response barriers.

The Strategic Investment Program is not intended to sustain individual research projects or provide pilot project funding, replace the start-up/retention funding process, provide funding for capital infrastructure which should be directed to the OVPR Cores Infrastructure Investment, or manage requests for extramural proposal mandatory cost share (see Mandatory Cost Share below).

This program may change in subsequent FY27 cycles or future fiscal years, including potential shifts in eligible requests, prioritized activities, and funding availability.

Submission Process:

Applications are due by 5:00 pm on the submission deadline date through the CSU InfoReady Review system. The system will not accept applications after 5:00 pm.

See the RFP announcement or the opportunity page within InfoReady Review for information regarding specific required proposal content.

Submission Deadlines:

The OVPR Strategic Investment Program will have funding cycles that align with when funding will be needed, across a fall, spring, and summer semester timeline. Submission deadlines are highlighted below and requests must be received by 5:00 pm MT. Requests received after the deadline will not be considered in that funding cycle and must be submitted to the next funding cycle. New cycles will be announced approximately four weeks prior to the submission deadline. Funding decisions are anticipated to be made within six weeks following the deadline.

The submission deadline date for upcoming cycles, including the current cycle, are:

Important Documents