Faculty invited to submit innovative proposals for funding

Faculty invited to submit innovative proposals for funding

BY JADE BOYD and ANN LUGG

The Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI) is now accepting proposals for the next round of funding in the Enriching Rice through Information Technology (ERIT) program.

ERIT funds proposals from Rice faculty who need seed money to undertake projects involving information technology. The purpose of the seed funding is to encourage cross-disciplinary research using information technology and to enable faculty to obtain additional funding from outside sources.

“In its first three years, ERIT has leveraged about $100,000 into about $1.5 million in external funding,” said Jan Odegard, executive director of CITI.

For example, one of the first ERIT grant winners, composer Anthony K. Brandt, was just awarded $7,500 from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to complete his Web-based music appreciation course “Sound Reasoning,” which was started with ERIT funding in 2003.

Brandt, assistant professor of composition at the Shepherd School of Music, is working with Rice’s Connexions Project to develop an online course that seamlessly interweaves music and text to form a truly interactive experience.

Brandt’s initial grant of $25,000 included funding to develop a prototype course that includes three lessons and associated listening galleries. In addition, a significant portion of the grant was earmarked as “seed” funding that Brandt could use to secure the rest of the money he’d need to complete the remaining six modules in the introductory course.

“The NEA award provides important recognition for our project, and it would not have happened without seed funding from CITI,” Brandt said. “Both the CITI and NEA grants are crucial steps in fully funding the project, which we hope to have completed and online by fall 2006.”

CITI’s ERIT funding is provided by the Sheafor/Lindsay Innovation Fund, which was established in 2001 with a gift from Rice alumni Steve Sheafor ’72 and Cindy

Lindsay ’73. To learn more about ERIT or to download a proposal submission form, visit CITI’s homepage at <http://citi.rice.edu>.

“With ERIT, CITI wants to encourage faculty to think beyond the traditional borders of science and engineering,” Odegard said. “Information technology is increasingly pervasive in our society, and we want Rice to stay on the cutting edge in developing new ways to use IT resources for research and teaching.”