Kris Wolff
Who She Is
Manager of the Office of Sponsored Programs.
What She Does
Wolff works closely with faculty members to find funding for their research. Her office oversees the completion and timely submission of grant applications and helps ease the post-award process of setting up accounts, creating budgets and submitting required status reports to funders. She has worked at Fordham for four years.
Funding Climate
“The funding climate in 2011 was slightly better than it was four years ago, when the economy took a downturn. At that time, private foundations funded by Wall Street were saying, ‘We’re not taking any new applications.’ Now they have started up again. Federal agencies were not hit quite as hard, but even those have become more competitive. So it is difficult.”
How We’re Doing
“We have had an increase in the number of grants going out every year for the past five years. We have received more money in each year (of those five years) so we are doing OK. In the last fiscal year, Fordham received more than $44 million in funding. Five years ago, it was about $30 million.
“We are trying to create more of a culture of research here than existed previously. To those ends, we work closely with the Office of Faculty Development, which funds and publicizes internal research. Often, external funding is based on pilot studies funded internally by Fordham. Together, we are slowly getting faculty more interested in doing research.”
What Faculty Members Should Know
“Leave yourself enough time to write a really good grant application. Sometimes faculty members see a deadline and think, ‘Oh, it’s months away,’ so they may put it off. But even if it is months away, start deciding what you are going to do. At the last minute, it’s too late, and it’s not the best application you could have put in.”
What’s In Our Grant Pool
“Our faculty members are researching many diverse and interesting topics. They have received awards for everything from how city lights can disrupt the migratory patterns of birds to the effect of eating grapes on age-related blindness.”
Can Faculty Call You?
“Of course. My extension is x4086. Our website is http://www.fordham.edu/osp.”
Hobbies
In her spare time, Kris designs and makes jewelry, studies hip-hop dance and practices Buddhist meditation.
