Principal Investigator (PI) Academy
In the fall of 2017, the Research & Innovation Office (RIO) launched the Principal Investigator (PI) Academy program to orient early career, tenure-track faculty to CU Boulder’s research community and resources. Through the PI Academy, faculty are actively engaged on a series of “core” research topics to ensure early investigators are well-positioned to apply for and secure external funding for their research, scholarly and creative endeavors.
Since its inception, PI Academy has had great success, more than doubling participation from its first to second year. CU Boulder is home to more than 100 PI Academy graduates across campus, and over 20 more current participants. The PI Academy community includes a range of departments, colleges, and institutes, with participants from the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering & Applied Science and the College of Media, Communication and Information.
In the Spring of 2022, RIO consulted with previous participants to ensure that the PI Academy is meeting the needs of our faculty. Our offerings reflect the faculty feedback we received, and we hope you will join us for: the PI Academy Kickoff, Time Management, Elements of a Strong One Page Project Summary, Avenues to External Funding, Building and Sustaining Transdisciplinary Research Relationships, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Research, & Strategic Career Planning!
Participation in the PI Academy includes the following benefits:
- Faculty Network—Build a network with faculty leaders and peers from across campus.
- Workshops—Priority workshop registration.
- Strategic Career and Research Coaching—One-on-one coaching on strategies to develop your individual research, scholarly or creative work plan.
- Identify Funding—One-on-one assistance in identifying relevant funding opportunities.
- Get to Know Campus Leaders—Roundtable discussions with campus leaders; past sessions have included the Provost, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation and Associate Deans for Research.
- FRPA Reportable—Certificate of Completion (reportable on your annual Faculty Report of Professional Activities).
- Proposal Development Support—Priority access to services including strategic grant writing advice and proposal development, editing, proofreading, and rigorous proposal review.
These offerings provide a basic, beginning foundation to support you in your research at CU Boulder. You are committing to attend these seven sessions, which will be virtual for the 2024-25 Cohort. In addition to these core offerings, we will provide opportunities for casual in-person networking events you may attend at your discretion.
September: PI Academy Kickoff: This event, required for the new PI Academy cohort, will welcome participants and provide an opportunity to network and learn about various resources and components of the PI Academy and the Research & Innovation Office. Previous participants will be in attendance to offer their insights into the program and its benefits.
October: Time Management: This presentation condensed the ideas of many published time management experts into an overall approach for managing multiple projects, tasks, responsibilities, philosophies, practical how-tos, strategies for managing the growing pile of emails in your inbox, along with hands-on time management activities.
November: Elements of a Strong One Page Project Summary: A project summary (“one pager”) has multiple uses. Participants will first be introduced to the key components of a clear and persuasive one page project summary. We will then break into groups to explore field/area (sciences, arts, humanities) specific approaches for one-page project summaries.
December: Avenues to External Funding: Learn how to use freely available databases of external funding opportunities for fellowships and grants. Including set up of funding alerts specific to your scholarly research or creative work through SPIN. Learn to use Dimensions to identify potential funding opportunities using a description of a current proposal idea.
February: Building and Sustaining Transdisciplinary Research Relationships: We will present best practices for building and sustaining transdisciplinary research relationships in this webinar. Transdisciplinary research approaches are being applied to today’s complex scientific, medical, and societal problems. Diverse forms of disciplinary and experiential knowledge are required to understand these challenges, develop workable solutions, and increasingly garner external support for your projects.
March: Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Research: Racial disparities and implicit biases exist within institutions of higher education, including within researchers themselves. This session will discuss best practices for ensuring Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in research, your labs, and the individual level. By considering differing views, ideas and approaches, equitable and inclusive practices help promote research excellence that better addresses the needs of a diverse population.
May: Strategic Career Planning: RIO's Director of Strategic Projects Emily CoBabe-Ammann will guide PI Academy participants through a strategic career planning exercise to help develop your individual research plan. This workshop will lay the foundation for individual career strategy sessions with Emily offered in the summer after the session.
The PI Academy is geared toward tenure-track faculty who are within the first three years of their CU Boulder academic appointment at the level of Assistant Professor or the equivalent. If you are interested in participating but do not fall into this category, please contact the RIO Research Development Team at: rio@colorado.edu.
Note: To receive a Certificate of Completion, faculty must attend 7 mandatory PI Academy workshops over a 24-month period. These workshops will be scheduled based on the full cohorts’ availability at the beginning of each semester. You will also have priority access to all of our other Research Development Webinars and Workshops.
2024-25 PI Academy Mandatory Webinars
Once you are registered for the PI Academy, you will be added to the Canvas course, where you can fill in When2Meets for each of the following events. Please register for the Kickoff by clicking on the link below. All events for the 2024-25 cohort will be via Zoom unless otherwise denoted below.
- September 12, 2024, 2:30-3:30 p.m. MT / PI Academy Kickoff
- September: Time Management
- Mid-Semester: PI Academy Fall Celebration (in-person)
- October: Elements of a Strong One Page Project Summary
- November: Avenues to External Funding
- February: Building and Sustaining Transdisciplinary Research Relationships
- March: Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Research
- May: Strategic Career Planning
- May: Spring Networking/Celebration Event (in-person)
* Zoom is committed to providing accessible meetings for all. Additional information regarding specific features, documents, and support can be found here.
- Building your network of Mentors w/ Dr. Christine Wiedinmyer ► March 16, 2022
- Note: You may need to log into CU Boulder Stream with your IdentiKey credentials to access this recording.
- Leveraging the Research & Innovation Office (RIO) to Accelerate Faculty Success ► September 9 & 15, 2021
- PI Academy Kickoff ► September 2, 2021
- CCTSI Pilot Grant Program Info Meeting ► September 1, 2021