Background

For 25 years, Georgia State University has ranked among the top research universities and has been distinguished by the tremendous expansion of its innovative research enterprise. For the past four years we have been the highest-ranked university without an engineering, medical or agricultural school. From FY11 to FY21, our research expenditures have more than doubled from $93 million to nearly $200 million.

In April 2023, the Georgia State Senate approved a new 10-Year Strategic Plan that aims to transform the university into the national model of an urban research university. One specific goal within the plan aims to double the university’s research expenditures from $200 million to $400 million by 2033.

The Problem

While an increase in research dollars is laudable, this has not come without consequence to GSU’s research administration infrastructure. In an ideal world, as our research dollars increase, we’d see no increase in the amount of time it takes to complete proposal processes. If processing time were to stay the same, this would suggest that GSU has invested in infrastructure and tooling that supports its growing award portfolio.

Unfortunately, there are reasons to think otherwise. In the figure below, we see that as GSU’s research portfolio has grown across fiscal years, so too has the number of days it takes to complete research administration tasks. Anecdotally, we also hear opinions from research administrators that our workflow processes, tooling, and staff training are poor or in need of improvement.

Given the aforementioned points, it is reasonable to believe that the present challenges to the GSU’s research administration processes, left unaddressed, may impede its ability to meet its research-related goals within the 10-year strategic plan. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze our workflow data to unearth trends that illuminate critical areas of improvement within the university’s research administration processes. To ensure the scope was manageable, the sample data was restricted to that of the College of Education and Human Development.

Research Questions

  1. What are the workflow bottlenecks in the research administration processes in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at Georgia State University?