Research development specialist helps KU earn funding for international education

Brett Bias | Research Development Specialist | Hall Center for the Humanities

International education at KU is made possible both by expert faculty teaching foreign languages in the classroom and research support staff who help secure the resources needed to hire those educators. Brett Bias is one such staff member.

Bias is a research development specialist at the Hall Center for the Humanities, one of KU’s 11 designated research centers. He began his time at the center as a graduate intern in the summer of 2018 before accepting a position in KU’s Office of Research Pre-Award Services unit. In May 2020 Bias returned to the Hall Center.

As a research development specialist, Bias provides support for KU faculty and staff before and after they submit proposals for external research funding. This includes helping review application materials, drafting budgets and managing funds after they have been received.

“He takes pride in his work and gets it done on time — as is critical, since granting agencies have hard deadlines,” said Kathy Porsch, research development officer at the Hall Center.

One especially important funding proposal Bias influenced was KU’s U.S. Department of Education Title VI application. The Title VI National Resource Centers program provides grants to establish and strengthen academic centers throughout the country that teach modern foreign languages, as well as provide instruction about the history and cultures of the regions where the languages are used.

“These applications — which include a 50-page project description as well as complex budget and detailed supporting materials encompassing course enrollments during the previous Title VI cycle, bios for every faculty member affiliated with the center, partnership descriptions and confirmation letters, and much more — are the most complex and intensively compressed applications we deal with,” Porsch said.

“Despite the lingering COVID restrictions that kept us working in our home offices and his lack of experience with this type of grant, he was able to help the two centers win the National Resources Center (NRC) and Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) grants that are critical to their missions in that cycle.”

Bias was specifically involved with the Title VI applications for the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Kansas African Studies Center (KASC), which both help educate the next generation of Jayhawks about these parts of the world.

“The 2022-26 NRC grant provides $227,000 per year for teaching Latin American & Caribbean courses, faculty and administrative travel at home and abroad, outreach programs to KU and the public at large, organizing and hosting international conferences, and supporting the library collections.  The FLAS provides $260,000 per year in student fellowships for the learning of Less Commonly Taught Languages,” said Brent Metz, CLACS director and professor of anthropology. “Brett contributed critical editing for CLACS’s NRC and FLAS grant applications.”

“Brett was incredibly helpful, particularly in ensuring that the grant outline was well-organized,” said Doreen Siilo, KASC education program coordinator. “He was very attentive to our concerns and provided thorough answers to our questions.”