Managing a Provost's Strategic Investment Fund at the University of Arizona

Nina Bates, Director, Operations and Strategic Initiatives, in the University of Arizona’s Office of the Provost helped transform the ad hoc, opaque investment process used to manage the Provost's Investment Fund into a transparent, competitive, and data-driven program using InfoReady.

By instituting funding priorities, structured review, campus-wide engagement, and rigorous outcome tracking, the Provost's Investment Fund now consistently advances institutional strategy, fosters collaboration, and demonstrates measurable ROI through public reporting while remaining nimble enough to co-fund or route strong proposals to other campus partners. 

The transformation of the Provost's Investment Fund relied on using the tools in the UA's InfoReady Platform, branded "Arizona Cultivate" on campus, to make positive changes while decreasing the administrative burden of managing the fund. UA also manages their other internal funding programs in InfoReady.

Some of the tools Nina highlighted include:

• InfoReady's end-to-end competition management includes: Submission, review, award, and progress reporting
• Reviewer management: Allows assignment by category; automated reminders (e.g., Mon/Thu); deadlines; and visibility into the status of all reviews allows the team to manage outreach only to the reviewers who fall behind
• Batch operations: Reviewer assignment, notifications, and award/decline communications
• Reporting: Data fields designed up-front to enable downstream analytics; annual report generation. 
  • What is really important is to ensure applications ask the right questions. Design your form fields to match the metrics you’ll need later. As Nina says, “If you don’t ask for it, you can’t report it.”
• Microsites: Tailored landing pages for distinct audiences; used to support units without their own license

UA's Provost's Investment Fund Details:

Arizona Cultivate (InfoReady) for All

While InfoReady often is launched on campus through the research office, which was true for UA, the UA Provost's office now extensive use of InfoReady shows how valuable the platform can be for applications and processes of many types.

In addition to managing its internal funding programs, the Provost's Office now uses InfoReady for managing processes for faculty, staff, and students including:

• Data Collection, Forms, and Requests

• Faculty Honors and Awards
• Institutionally Coordinated Opportunities
• Open Funding Opportunities
• Other Campus Internal Funding Opportunities

The Provost's office, the research office, and multiple colleges and units across UA are using Arizona Cultivate together, because it meets their needs.