Grants Manager

The College of the Arts (COTA) invites you to join our grants team in the role of the new Grants Manager position, working alongside two grants accountants and reporting to the Associate Dean of Research and Strategic Initiatives.  The College’s external funding has grown substantially in the last 5 years.  The COTA grants team is committed to supporting and continuing that growth through fostering curiosity and advancing the college's capability to pursue a diverse array of funding opportunities and ambitious collaborations. This new position will be a crucial component in how we accomplish that, by leading the comprehensive development and submission of fundable proposals, from the initial ideation stages to modification and management of projects throughout the award period, serving as a pivotal resource for principal investigators (PIs), project teams, sponsors, and partners, and ensuring the seamless execution of grant-funded projects.

You will play an integral role in guiding PIs through the process of identifying funding, refining project concepts, and constructing compelling proposals. You will also actively work to increase visibility of UF processes for arts fund-seeking faculty, staff, and students, collaborating with the College’s Strategic Communications office to promote and connect current COTA research to national and international conversations.  In this role, your focus will not be on UFIRST, compliance, post-award, or business systems-building. Instead, you will concentrate on enhancing COTA’s grants profile for both individual and team-based projects, identifying, facilitating, and developing partnerships on campus, regionally and nationally and working with the Associate Dean of Research to create and implement a strategic plan that will grow and enhance COTA’s grants initiatives.

The University of Florida College of the Arts intends to be a transformative community, responding to and generating foundational shifts in the arts and beyond.  As business and academic professionals, artists, scholars, advisors, and teachers, we, the staff of the College, embrace the complexity of our evolving human experience and seek to empower our colleagues, students, and faculty to respond to and shape that experience fearlessly through critical thinking, creativity, constructive questioning, and respectful dialogue. We seek a colleague who engages with openness and enthusiasm for the work and the mission of the college. We seek a colleague who possesses skills in designing and facilitating work that advances curiosity, inclusion, open intellectual discourse, and the well-being of all in an environment of complex diversity. We seek a colleague who identifies as a trusted steward of resources, balancing institutional requirements and the demand for innovative solutions.

The University of Florida is an equal opportunity institution dedicated to building a broadly diverse and inclusive faculty, seeking faculty of all races, ethnicities, genders, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. 

Detailed Responsibilities

Proposal Development and Lifecycle Support

• Grow the college’s sponsored research portfolio by supporting college faculty, staff, and students in identifying external funding opportunities, developing individual and collaborative projects, and crafting competitive proposals. As an arts college in a research university, the grants manager will work closely with PIs to realize arts research projects (which may be artmaking or performance, arts education, community-engaged arts, arts and AI, scientific and social scientific investigations into the arts, and many more methodologies and approaches) within the parameters of UF and the parameters of sponsors.
• Coordinate the research of potential grants resources including government, foundation, and corporate institutions. Create customized support for college faculty, staff, and students to help them understand and locate appropriate funding for their work throughout its lifecycle. This will include working with varied sponsors, e.g., federal funding (including NSF, NIH, NEH, IMLS, and NEA most commonly), state or local grants for arts projects, foundation funding, and sometimes grants received as gifts.
• Match faculty, staff, and students to additional support to develop specific types of proposals, e.g., formal workshops, central UF support services (Office of Research, UF Foundation), federal agency rotators at UF, collaborators or resources in other units, etc.
• Meet individually with faculty, staff, and students who have grant ideas and work with them closely to develop their ideas into fundable projects, including guidance on approaching proposal narratives, budget development, selecting collaborators, identifying letter-writers and crafting letters of support, and other proposal parts that may be custom to the arts or this specific funding opportunity. This may include providing assistance in planning projects and writing proposals alongside project teams to train and mentor grant writing skills, educating PIs on how to most accurately estimate project expenses, advising faculty, staff, and students on additional services their proposals may require, e.g. digitization, assessment, tech licensing, archiving, communications plans, etc., and assisting faculty, staff, and students in building budgets that are atypical, requiring creative and open-minded problem solving to meet project goals and support the artistic vision of the PI within the framework of the funding opportunity.
• Collaborate with PIs to strategize when and how to contact program officers, participate and run meetings with program officers, and otherwise develop communications and relationships with program officers.
• Read guidelines closely and work with college grants accountants to prepare customized checklists to develop and submit proposals, identifying timelines and divisions of labor.
• Prepare faculty, staff, and students to work with COTA grants accountants to develop and submit a proposal. Read proposal drafts and provide feedback.
• Support the College’s grants accountants in developing complex proposals by creating supplementary materials that require expert knowledge.
• Support PIs in making necessary project and budget modifications, reporting, and maintaining relationships with sponsors. 

Research Communications  

• Work with Associate Dean of Research to oversee Research Communications: website, e-newsletter, database, COTA Research Series. This includes working with a Graduate Assistant who creates, formats, and produces the content and acts as webmaster.
• Collaborate with the College’s Strategic Communications office to promote and connect current research and funded research internal and external to COTA to national and international conversations.
• Maintain a high level of professional knowledge of the changing arts research and funding ecosystem through self-study, research, participation in professional development and national gatherings.
• Develop customized trainings and other internal communications for faculty, staff, and students to provide education on best practices, tools and tips for project management, budgeting guides, and grants management in ways that are responsive to creative and scholarly research practices in the arts. Think creatively and expansively about ways to develop these customized, arts-focused trainings to meet our PIs where they are, and to connect to the knowledge and experiences of arts researchers and creative professionals that work in a variety of disciplines.

Teaming Support  

• Identify and facilitate the development of partnerships on campus, as well as with organizations locally, regionally, and nationally for project funding opportunities. Work with other colleges and other staff to arrange team building and research collaboration events.
• Support nascent teams in identifying funding and developing collaborative projects (and MOUs as appropriate) to solidify their expected commitments and contributions.
• Work with COTA Advancement to involve donors in research promotion events as appropriate.
• Work with the Associate Dean of Research to connect internal research funding opportunities and seed funding to external grant-seeking.

Strategic Planning

• Work with the Associate Dean of Research and grants accountants to create and implement a strategic plan for sponsored research in the college.
• Collaborate with college Directors of Finance, HR, Development, and Strategic Communications.
• Represent the College at inter-college and university-level research meetings.
  

$75,000 - $78,500 based on qualifications and experience; eligible for a comprehensive and highly competitive leave and benefits package*

 *In addition to salary, the University of Florida (UF) offers low cost State Health plans, a number of Dental plans to fit you and your family’s needs, and Vision. Domestic partner coverage through GatorCare is also available. Optional plans such as life, disability, legal and accident insurance are also available.

UF provides a variety of leave programs including vacation, sick leave, 11 paid holidays, personal leave days, and family medical leave. TEAMS employees accrue approximately 22 vacation days annually, 13 sick days annually, and 4 personal leave days, typically used during the holiday closing period (accruals based on full-time employment). UF also provides you the flexibility to deal with life’s challenges by offering paid family leave, eight full weeks of leave over a 24-month period.

Build a retirement roadmap with competitive pension plans, investment accounts and a host of voluntary add-ons, such as 457 deferred compensation and 403(b) plans.

UF Employees are also eligible for the GatorPerks discount program , which provides big savings at various business and retailers!

Explore UF’s plethora of benefit options here: TEAMS Benefits

Bachelor’s degree and four years of experience in grant and contract administration; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Experience assessing initial proposal scope of work and budget
• Experience assisting faculty, staff, and/or students with developing viable budgets
• Evidence of skill working in ways that advance curiosity, inclusion, open discourse, and the well-being of all in an environment of complex diversities
• Familiarity with projects and expenses in arts disciplines
• Administrative experience at a public research university (in an arts area, preferable)

Location and Schedule
Normal working hours are Monday – Friday 8am-5pm

A hybrid work schedule is an option for this position.  Some in-person attendance at an office in Fine Arts Building A on UF’s main campus will be required.  A specific hybrid schedule that would work for the college and the employee can be discussed during the interview process.

Application Deadline
Application and any corresponding documents must be submitted by 11:55 p.m. (ET) of the posting end date of February 25th, 2024. 

Application Process
Applications must be submitted via the University of Florida’s online application system.
Online applications must include the following:
(1) a detailed letter of application that explains how you match the qualifications of this position
(2) a resume
(3) names and contact information of three professional references
The Search Committee may request additional materials at a later time.

This position has been reposted. Previous applicants are still under consideration and need not reapply.

Inquiries may be sent to:
Megan Baucom
Chair, Grants Manager Search
Email: [email protected]

The selected candidate will be required to provide an official transcript to the hiring department upon hire. A transcript will not be considered “official” if the designation of “Issued to Student” is visible. Degrees earned from an educational institution outside of the United States are required to be evaluated by a professional credentialing service provider approved by National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES).

If accommodation due to a disability is needed to apply for this position, please call +1 (352) 392- 2477or the Florida Relay System at +1 (800) 955-8771 (TDD). Hiring is contingent upon eligibility to work in the US. Searches are conducted in accordance with Florida's Sunshine Law.

THE COLLEGE OF THE ARTS: The mission of the College of the Arts is to be a transformative community, responding to and generating paradigmatic shifts in the arts and beyond.  We achieve the university’s mission by training professionals and educating students as artists and scholars, while developing their capacities for critical study, creative practice, and provocation.  The College offers baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral degrees. Approximately 1,700 students are pursuing majors in degrees offered by the College of the Arts under the direction of 130 faculty members in its three accredited schools— the School of Art + Art History, the School of Music, and the School of Theatre + Dance, and in the Center for Arts in Medicine, the Digital Worlds Institute, and the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship. In addition, the college comprises the University Galleries, and the University level of the New World School of the Arts in Miami. 

THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: The University of Florida is a comprehensive learning institution built on a land grant foundation, ranked one of the top five best public universities in the nation in U.S. News & World Report. We are The Gator Nation, a diverse community dedicated to excellence in education and research and shaping a better future for Florida, the nation and the world. Our mission is to enable our students to lead and influence the next generation and beyond for economic, cultural and societal benefit. UF is a graduate research institution with more than 50,000 students and membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities. Gainesville, which is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s most livable cities, is located midway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Together, the University and the community comprise the educational, medical and cultural center of North Central Florida, with outstanding resources such as the University of Florida Performing Arts (Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, the Squitieri Studio Theatre, the Baughman Center, University Auditorium), the Harn Museum of Art, the Florida Museum of Natural History and in the community, the Hippodrome State Theatre and Dance Alive National Ballet.