Project Team Analyzing Survey Results to Increase TTUHSC Grant Funding Capacity

• By Mark Hendricks
• November 7, 2025
• Research

A year ago, in August 2024, a team led by Lance McMahon, Ph.D., executive vice president for the Office of Research and Innovation at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC), received a three-year, $1.16 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant is one of the first made possible after TTUHSC was officially designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution – meaning eligible for Title III and V funding programs under the Higher Education Act – by the U.S. Department of Education in 2022.

Supported by the grant, which is part of the NIH’s Strengthening Research Opportunities for NIH Grants (STRONG) Initiative, the project team conducted a capacity-building study during the last year aimed at increasing the university’s overall NIH funding. 

In addition to McMahon, the project team includes Emily Dhurandhar, Ph.D., director of research special projects for TTUHSC’s Office of Research and Innovation; Min Kang, Pharm.D., Christine Garner, Ph.D., R.D., and Leslie Shen, Ph.D., from the TTUHSC School of Medicine; Phil Sizer Jr., P.T., Ph.D., Troy Hooper, P.T., Ph.D., and Julie St. John, Dr.P.H., from the TTUHSC School of Health Professions; Mike Blanton, Ph.D., from the TTUHSC Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; Ulrich Bickel, M.D., from the TTUHSC Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy; and Alyce Ashcraft, Ph.D., R.N., from the TTUHSC School of Nursing. 

Dhurandhar said TTUHSC is very strong in its basic biomedical research portfolio, especially related to cancer. The university has in the past received a steady stream of NIH research funding; when the grant was submitted, TTUHSC had received an annual average of $12,404,572 in NIH awards during the 2020-2022 period. In the most recent 2023-2025 period saw a 27% increase in NIH awards, averaging 15,813,442 annually.

“We've got a great foundation, and the goal of this grant is to build on that foundation to increase our capacity to earn more NIH funding,” Dhurandhar said. “There are a lot of different boxes to check for getting NIH funding, and it's pretty competitive. It's definitely good that we're paying attention to this and that we're working strategically toward it.”

During the first year of the STRONG grant, Dhurandhar said a group worked to gather data from within the institution using a comprehensive needs assessment survey. The survey answered questions about how people are doing research at TTUHSC, what the university’s research culture is like and what types of resources are devoted toward research. The goal is to make data-informed decisions about the areas in which TTUHSC research should invest and then address any gaps that may exist to bolster the university’s capacity to increase its NIH and other federally funded research grants.

“We were able to deploy the survey in May and I was absolutely thrilled to see that we got 1,228 responses across the institution,” Dhurandhar said. “That's 15% of our institution, and that's a terrific response rate for a big institution like TTUHSC.”

The project team received survey responses from 45% of university faculty — their goal was 50% — and they also heard from many students, doctoral trainees, postdoctoral researchers and staff. Based on those survey responses, Dhurandhar said the team has started analyzing the collected data to better understand how current investigators feel about the university’s research capacity.

“At the same time, we've been gathering and formalizing a lot of the institutional data that our Office of Research and Innovation has,” Dhurandhar explained. “For example, how many grants do we submit every year? What's our success rate when we submit a proposal? How often does it get funded? What areas are we really good at getting funding in and what areas do we need to focus on a little more as far as improving our ability to be competitive for that funding? Organizing a lot of institutional data is another major objective that we've accomplished.”

One specific question they were able to answer is how many TTUHSC researchers are actually submitting grant applications. Over the last five years, Dhurandhar said the data lists 233 unique TTUHSC investigators who have submitted research proposals and actively attempted to obtain research funding. The numbers also show that 35% of proposals made by TTUHSC researchers during the last five years have been submitted to the NIH. The two other top funders to whom TTUHSC researchers have submitted grant applications during that time include the U.S. Department of Defense (5%) and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), which received about 6% of TTUHSC grant proposals.

“That gives an idea of our portfolio, but we also are applying to a lot of different private institutions and different industry partners,” Dhurandhar added. “Over the last five years, we actually have applied to 214 different sponsors seeking research funding.”

Another metric the STRONG project team is analyzing is the submission behavior at TTUHSC, or how often people submit grant applications. Over the past five years, those numbers have averaged between 1.9 and 2.1 proposal submissions per principal investigator (PI) each year, with the largest year-to-year increase occurring between 2024 when the average was 1.7 submissions per PI, and 2025 (2.1 submissions per PI as of May 1). In addition, the total number of research funding proposals has increased from 208 in 2020 to 236 in 2025 (also as of May 1).

“We're definitely seeing an increase on average in the number of submissions that people are sending in,” Dhurandhar noted. “The 2025 numbers, which should still be growing, represent an 11% growth over the 2020 baseline, so that's a good sign that this year the proposal submissions are really going up. Hopefully, that also will translate to an increase in our overall successful research funding.

Once all of the data have been analyzed, the results will be shared across TTUHSC. The STRONG project team already has partnered with each school’s associate dean for research to provide school-specific information, with which they can develop strategies to increase application success. Dhurandhar said there also will be a website where anyone can access the survey results and key findings related to research capacity and research productivity metrics for the institution.

“With this needs assessment, we should have a lot of answers that people may need as we're working on reaching or achieving our strategic plan,” Dhurandhar said. “We're also going to conduct focus groups throughout the fall to inform people about the needs assessment and the data analysis that we're conducting. I would love to hear from people who want to contribute to our focus groups over the fall. If there's anyone who wants to participate, I would love it if they reach out to me at emdhuran@ttuhscs.edu.”