Saint Mary’s College Awarded National Science Foundation Planning Grant
By Barbara Allison
In September, Saint Mary’s was awarded a $100,000 National Science Foundation Planning Grant, which will allow the College to analyze current research and grants infrastructure, assess needs, and find impactful ways to collaborate with similar institutions.
According to Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Colleen Hoover, planning grants help institutions such as Saint Mary’s build the infrastructure and form the teams and partnerships necessary for success when implementing long-term grants. The College has also formed a consortium with fellow Catholic women's colleges Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota and Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for this planning grant, with Saint Mary’s serving as the lead institution.
Over the next year, grant team members Claire Brown, Bettina Spencer, Patti Doyle, and Hoover, along with Dean of Faculty Anne Marie Short, will work with Brockport Research Institute to make assessments and determine the best ways to collaborate.
Brockport Research Institute, a leader in higher education research, will assist in gathering data. “They're going to develop a survey for all Saint Mary's students, a survey for faculty and academic staff, and conduct a focus group with alumnae in research careers,” Hoover said. "Both the fact that the surveys support a group of women's colleges and that Saint Mary's is seeking input from our alumnae in determining our research needs are exciting features of this project."
With this grant, the College will do an inventory of its current research infrastructure, assessing its strengths, and its gaps. This will help the consortium to identify areas where they can collaborate to fill gaps, share strengths, and create something together, elevating all three institutions. “We can identify our own campuses strengths and weaknesses and work to bolster and build services that support independent and collaborative student research,” said Spencer.
This grant will provide intentional time and energy into identifying the best practices for increasing students' access to the research experience. By creating a research-focused consortium of women's colleges, we can share resources and make sure that all of our students are able to successfully navigate the research process early in their college career.
- Bettina Spencer
“The consortium will benefit all of its partners by providing shared resources. If one campus has a particular strength they can share it, or they can show the other campus how to build that resource,” Spencer said. “Similarly, if a campus needs support in a particular area, they can reach out to consortium members for guidance. Ideally we will create a tri-campus women's college system of sharing research-based knowledge and resources.”
Spencer and Brown will conduct site-visits at schools with strong research infrastructure already in place, including Hope College in Holland, Michigan; Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio; and Bryn Mawr College and Swarthmore College, both in the Philadelphia suburbs. “With the consortium in place we can potentially do summer research exchanges if we have faculty and students who want to collaborate across the campuses,” said Spencer. “We also hope to identify creative ways on and off campus to increase access to research opportunities for a wider range of students.”
Long-term, Hoover envisions this work supporting growth in access to both summer and year-round research experiences for Saint Mary’s students. “There’ve been a lot of financial gifts that have supported undergraduate research projects. For faculty and students to work together, we need new models where we're not just focused on the summer,” she said. A year-round research model would allow students to ladder-up in their research as they progress in their academic careers, giving upper-level students the opportunities to mentor first-year researchers.
While the College’s Ring Out Ring True giving campaign is currently in its quiet phase, Hoover has already seen an impact regarding year-round student research. Recently, Dr. Roy Curtiss III honored his late wife and research partner, Josephine Clark-Curtiss ’68 with an endowed biology professorship and accompanying student research funds. This fall, Associate Professor of Biology Calli Davison Versagli ’09 accepted the inaugural appointment as the Dr. Josephine Clark- Curtiss Endowed Professor of Biology.
“Calli is the perfect first recipient to launch students into medical and health careers,” Hoover said. “She's such a good student mentor for women's cancer researchers. The fact that she's going to be able to do both pre-health advising and have a group of student researchers working with her is amazing.”
“Saint Mary's has an excellent track record of producing undergraduate research. This grant will provide intentional time and energy into identifying the best practices for increasing students' access to the research experience,” said Spencer. “By creating a research-focused consortium of women's colleges, we can share resources and make sure that all of our students are able to successfully navigate the research process early in their college career.”
December 9, 2025