Background

EPSCoR---the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research---is a state-federal partnership to cultivate the research capabilities of states which receive relatively small shares of federal research funding. All of the major federal agencies that support research operate EPSCoR programs. The NSF EPSCoR program, established in 1978, was the first and is still the largest, with an FY 1997 budget of $38.4 million. NSF assists twenty-two eligible states* with EPSCoR cooperative agreements which support critical infrastructure improvements and provide for EPSCoR co-funding of proposals to NSF's regular grant programs.

In 1993, AAAS, with support from the NSF EPSCoR Program, initiated a project to examine the concept of "competitiveness" as it pertains to research institutions, to identify strategies to enhance it and metrics to assess progress towards achieving it. Results of the project are presented in Competitiveness in Academic Research (Albert H. Teich, ed., Washington, DC: AAAS, 1996). Following that effort, AAAS developed plans for a larger project that would go beyond studying the concept of competitiveness and use the resources of the AAAS to offer practical assistance to state EPSCoR programs and their participating institutions and researchers. The current AAAS EPSCoR project is the result. Following award of the NSF grant in late 1996, AAAS established the Research Competitiveness Program (RCP) to house the project and future, related activities.

One result of the work carried out under the NSF grant has been the publication of a companion volume, Strategies for Competitiveness in Academic Research (J. Scott Hauger and Celia McEnaney, editors, Washington DC: AAAS, 2000).

As a continuing legacy, many of the activities carried out under the NSF grant are now being offered through new programs within the RCP including the Research Competitiveness Service, Research Infrastructure Project, and Research Collaboration Support.

* Currently operating in 21 States and Puerto Rico: