2014-2015 Annual Report

Abstract

The 2014-15 academic year marked the first year since AY 1998-99 that research and graduate studies were administratively organized into one office. The reorganization brings synergy and focus to these two vital and strongly linked components of the University of Maine’s land grant mission. During FY 2015 a total of $51,134,092 were received from extramural sponsors and were comprised of 370 awards. These results closely mirror FY 2014 with 363 awards and$51,169,551 received. Our average proposal success rate from FY 2005 – FY 2015 was approximately 68%. The FY 2015 proposal success rate was 76%, up from 63% in FY 2014. UMaine is consistently ranked among the top 125 public universities for research through the NSF Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. The most recent HERD survey reflects a steep increase in research expenditures at UMaine, from $77.6 million in FY13 to$101.2 million in FY 14. UMaine’s Carnegie Classification remains in the High Research Activity category. In addition, the Graduate School continued to increase its student recruitment activities, focusing on professional graduate programs, in which the majority of losses in student enrollment in the Graduate School have occurred