Collaboration, not competition, drive the latest round of grants under the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence program.
Bridget Trogden thought she knew the drill for winning a research grant: Write a proposal with her colleagues at Clemson University, where she is a professor of engineering and science education; submit it to a funder; and then pray it beats out hundreds of worthy competitors for a handful of awards.
Trogden was reacting to HHMI’s decision to substitute collaboration for competition in funding the third round of its high-profile program, called Inclusive Excellence 3 . It enticed 104 institutions, including Clemson, to work together in small “learning communities.” And it broke one of the cardinal rules in competitive grantmaking by choosing the winners before they had even submitted detailed proposals—and then allowing the winners to come up with a plan on how to spend the money.
That’s when David Asai, HHMI’s education guru, decided to go in a different direction. “The pandemic gave us time to reflect,” Asai recalls. “And we decided that a competition is not all that well suited to achieving the changes that we would like to see.” Asai then assigned the 104 schools that agreed to participate to one of seven “learning communities” based on their expressed interest in pursuing one of the three grand challenges. Adopting a team approach wasn’t HHMI’s only new wrinkle. Most academic consortia are made up of institutions that have chosen their partners. But Asai worried such familiarity could stifle innovation.
Kelly Neiles, a chemical education professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a member of a learning community focused on faculty training and assessment, says her colleagues appreciate the unusual terms of the award. “Having a funder give you that type of autonomy is unheard of,” she says. “But HHMI recognized that this is something that will be evolving over time, and that nobody knows what it will eventually look like.
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