by Derek R. Lane, Investigator, and James Applegate, NCA President

It has been nine months since NCA institutional and unit members were first encouraged to contribute to a comprehensive extramural funding database that would function to identify agencies and foundations that have supported communication scholars and their research.

Ultimately, NCA will use the results of this project to construct a searchable online database that allows members to search by topic or agency to discover colleagues who have grants in particular areas or with certain agencies. We also will link this site to similar databases in related disciplines.

The initial survey was conducted by Derek Lane and the database was housed at the University of Kentucky.  

You may search the survey data, or add a record to the survey database, by clicking the appropriate links on the left.

Teams more successful

Successful funding proposals typically require a team of researchers with specific areas of expertise that match the demands of the funding request from agencies. By linking scholars across institutions and across disciplines NCA hopes to contribute to successful proposals by members that fund important basic, applied, or teaching scholarship. In many cases work that needs to be done cannot be accomplished without extramural funding. Moreover, funding from outside agencies, regardless of the amount, contributes to the stature and success of programs within both teaching and research institutions.

The likelihood of developing successful research funding proposals can be significantly improved with accurate information regarding extramural funding.  All heads of NCA departmental members were sent instructions on how to log in departmental grant information. If you have questions after consulting with our chair or dean contact the NCA office. We will provide an updated report on responses later in the year. We would like to have many more responses quickly to incorporate into the database.

As encouraging as these initial results are we know there is much more funding in the discipline and encourage members to submit through their unit heads information on their funded work. The larger the database the more useful it will be in supporting more funding.

Funding is available

NCA has sponsored numerous programs and workshops to provide assistance for those in need of funding for their scholarship. Still, many communication teachers and researchers seem to be discouraged by the belief that the discipline is not very “fundable.” Preliminary results suggest that funding is available for diverse areas of communication research. However, an accurate picture of the fundable nature of communication will not be available until all NCA members ensure that their extramural grants supporting basic, applied, or teaching scholarship are included in the database.

Initial report

The database currently consists of 140 entries representing 22 colleges and universities.  The vast  majority (96%) are public. Preliminary results indicate that the primary role of the communication scholar in the funding sources represented is primary investigator (71%) followed by co-investigator (13%) and consultant (6%).  Funding is reported from both government/federal (64%, n=90) sources as well private/nonprofit (36%, n=50) sources and range from $5000 to over $25,000,000 (see Table 1).

Database entries show communication scholars collaborating with colleagues in business, educational psychology, family studies, nursing, organizational management, psychology, sociology and women’s studies (to name but a few).

Scholars have secured funding from organizations as varied as the National Science Foundation (NCA is currently working at the national level to further strengthen our presence at NSF with the help of our funded NSF scholars), AMC Cancer Center, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Centers for Disease Control, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Council for European Studies, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mediascope, Inc., National Foreign Lan-guage Center, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Lilly Corporation.