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____________________________________________
MONTHLY
UPDATE
News for C-FAR Members
Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural
Research
August/September 2008
Late summer greetings from C-FAR. Highlights
of the past month include…
SPECIAL BOARD MEETING
HELD
Your Board of Directors held a special meeting via conference
call during mid-August to address a few budget and funding
allocation matters now that the FY09 appropriation is established.
Their discussions and subsequent actions included:
- Adoption of budgets for the FY09 administrative office
and 1% Member Expense accounts. Unexpended funds from
the FY08 administrative office account will reduce the
level of FY09 funds needed and the 1% Member Expense account
is legislatively funded at this percentage for various
member-related purposes.
- Note: These two budgets had been previously considered
and adopted on a preliminary basis at the Board's
July meeting - based on a $4.5 million appropriation.
With the reduction in the appropriation, the budgets
had to be re-considered and as a result, the funding
provision for filling a currently vacant C-FAR staff
position was removed from the adopted FY09 administrative
office budget.
- Placed funding for an Achievement Award program in FY09
"on holiday." The merits of directing these
funds to assist in meeting ongoing research funding needs
were deemed greater than conducting this program in FY09.
The Board did express, however, their interest in considering
alternatives to this program for recognizing outstanding
research. They will do so at their next regular meeting.
- Established the protocols for funding new initiatives
through the FY09 External Competitive Grants Program (see
next section).
FY09 & FY10
EXTERNAL PROGRAM ADJUSTMENTS
The External Competitive Grants Program (External Program),
per legislation, is funded at a minimum of 15% of the annual
appropriation (our practice has been to fund the program
at 15%). An additional practice has been to fund multi-year
initiatives fully up-front. For example, a three-year initiative
funded at $30,000 per year would have the entire $90,000
allocated from the External Program's funding in the year
the project was initiated (versus funding the initiative
one year at a time).
However, the FY09 appropriation level has presented a challenge
in being able to fund a viable number of initiatives utilizing
this funding approach (only 2 or 3 could be funded via the
previous funding protocol). This was a particular concern
due to the significant efforts that researchers made in
submitting what is considered to be one of the highest quality
set of proposals in the External Program's history and the
tremendous efforts of our working groups in reviewing and
prioritizing these proposals for funding.
In addition, the traditional and commonly accepted method
of funding multi-year research initiatives is year-to-year;
not fully up-front. Therefore, the Board and I felt it was
imperative to consider other funding approaches, namely
the traditional approach for funding multi-year research
initiatives.
The results of the Board's extensive study after considering
numerous factors were: (a) fund the first year of FY09 initiatives
from the FY09 External Program's allocation with the second/third
year of multi-year initiatives being funded from the FY10
External Program allocation either in full or in-part, and
(b) to not conduct an FY10 External Program over the next
year so that these funds are available to meet the funding
commitments of initiatives started in FY09.
While this is a slight change in protocol for funding multi-year
initiatives, it is more in line with the standard funding
protocol (as noted above) and is also the funding protocol
utilized for other C-FAR research programs.
Let me share that this was a rather complicated issue and
one I cannot fully expound upon in this Update. Therefore,
I would be happy to visit with you should you have any questions.
EXTERNAL PROGRAM PROGRESS
REPORTS
Per our reporting requirements, progress reports were requested
of and have been received from the principal investigators
of four External Program initiatives started prior to FY08
(reminder: progress reports for initiatives beginning in
FY08 were not requested due to the delay in FY08 funding
being available). The four initiatives for which progress
reports were submitted this year are titled: Integrated
Management of Summer Diseases of Apples, Thermochemical
Conversion Process to Produce Oil from Various Types of
Livestock Manure, Engineering Economic Models for Rural
Ethanol Production Facilities, and Characterizing Virus-Nematode
Complexes that Limit Vineyard Sustainability.
The purpose of these progress reports is to ensure satisfactory
progress is being made towards their stated goals; not to
begin gleaning outcomes of the research. These reports were
shared with the respective working group chair and vice
chair and university leader. Each of the initiatives' progress
has been determined to have been highly satisfactory.
FY08 EXPENDITURE
REPORTS
As is the case each year at this time, an accounting of
every C-FAR dollar expended this past fiscal year is currently
being reported to our office by all entities expending such
funds. This expenditure information is provided to the State
of Illinois (via the Illinois Department of Agriculture)
and is also included in C-FAR's annual report.
NEXT MONTH…
Now that our FY09 financial directions are in place, and
with many additional matters to share, I will look to preparing
what is referred to as the Semi-Annual Report to the Membership.
I initiated this report in 2007 when we ceased having an
August Semi-Annual Meeting. I look forward to sharing the
state of our association and research programs with you
through this report.
In addition, we also anticipate the following in September…
RESEARCH FUNDING DECISIONS
There are two general sets of research funding decisions
to be made over the next month:
a) External Program - per the above section on this matter,
your working group chairs and vice chairs are currently
considering options for new initiatives to fund in FY09.
While the Board set the direction for this program's funding
protocol, the Board was clear in conveying that the working
group leaders should decide on which initiatives to fund
(based on the working group priorities of this past March).
b) Internal Programs at the Universities - at the four
universities, we anticipate seeing scenarios ranging from
just a few new initiatives being funded to previous funding
commitments needing to be reduced. While there were several
new initiatives started this past year, this year's appropriation
level will simply not allow for any significant number
of additional initiatives being started.
NOMINATING COMMITTEE
TO CONSIDER PROTOCOLS
The C-FAR Nominating Committee will consider protocols for
the nomination and election of the board of directors, working
group chairs and vice chairs, and working group representatives
to the Research Committee (all to be elected at the February
2009 Annual Meeting). The first phase of this process is
the call for board member nominees, which will be issued
this fall (with working group leaders' process beginning
early winter). Full details on the nomination and election
protocols of these C-FAR leaders will be communicated widely
this fall and winter.
Please remember that at least two of the board member seats
will be "open" (no incumbent due to two Directors
reaching term limitations). In addition, many of the working
group chair and vice chair and representatives to the Research
Committee seats will also be "open" due to term
limitations of current leaders.
REMINDER: BIOFUELS
& SUSTAINABILITY CONFERENCE
As I shared in last month's Update, a "Biofuels and
Sustainability Conference" will be held October 21
and 22 on the University of Illinois campus in Champaign.
Its sponsors are The Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability
and The Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research. The agenda
and list of speakers is impressive. Registration information
and a detailed description of the conference can be found
at: http://www.istc.illinois.edu/BiofuelsConference/
If you do not have access to the Web, please let me know
and we can drop this information in the mail to you.
C-FAR DAY AT WIU:
NOVEMBER 11
Plans continue to be made for this year's C-FAR Day, which
will be held at Western Illinois University in Macomb on
Tuesday, November 11. Complete information will be sent
to all C-FAR members during October. For now, please mark
your calendar for this unique event.
OTHER UPCOMING
EVENTS
- Salute to Agriculture Day at Fighting Illini vs.
Ohio State Football game - November 15 in Champaign-Urbana.
Time and additional details to be announced.
- C-FAR Annual Meeting - February 17, 2009 (Crowne
Plaza, Springfield)
All our best.
Kraig
SPORTS NOTES:
With the 2008 college football season beginning this weekend,
for those of you Fighting Illini football fans, the approximate
$120 million renovation to Memorial Stadium is almost complete
(although there remains a flurry of final construction activities
taking place as I write this Update). The Illini's first
home game is September 6 against Eastern Illinois University
and the Illini's preseason rank is 20th (AP) and 19th (USA
Today/Coaches Poll). If you have not been by the stadium
for some time, you will be quite surprised at the new look.
And as you'd expect from me, as we enter the final month
of baseball's regular season, GO
CUBS GO (the first place Cubs)! I know, and
am fully aware of the 99 year drought; but at the same time,
like many things in life, without hope and belief there
is nothing!
_______________________________________________________
Kraig A. Wagenecht, Executive Administrator
Illinois Council on Food & Agricultural Research (C-FAR)
1101 W. Peabody Drive · Urbana, IL 61801
Tel: 217.244.4232 · Fax: 217.244.8594
e-mail: wagenech@illinois.edu
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