ACOE_Self-Study

Standard III - Research and Scholarly Activity

3.1 The program supports, encourages and maintains research and scholarly activity. Overview Research and scholarly activity are institutional priorities, embedded in the College’s mission statement, which is to advance visual health and patient care through leadership in education, research and service. The College maintains active vision research laboratories performing basic, translational and clinical research. The new strategic plan calls for growth in the graduate and research programs to produce leaders in all areas of vision research . We are especially motivated to grow translational research that complements the College’s Clinical Vision Research Center (CVRC) to promote the application of fundamental knowledge to improve patient care that will lead the profession. The College has been successful at supporting, encouraging, and maintaining research and scholarly activity in vision and related sciences. Current research efforts generally fall into the following areas: • Cell and molecular biology of eye and retina • Ocular pharmacology • Visual optics • Visual neuroscience • Vision and visual perception • Clinical research Many of the College’s faculty publish regularly in premier general interest journals and high impact journals on neuroscience, eye, vision, and optometry. Research faculty at the College maintain collaborations with scientists at many other institutions and are successful at procuring grants and contracts. From 2014-2018, for example, College faculty authored over 186 peer- reviewed publications, including papers in major journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Neuroscience, Investigative Ophthalmology and Vision Science , and Optometry and Vision Science . During this period, faculty made over 200 presentations at national and international conferences and gave 62 invited lectures around the world. Data for prior years are given in Appendix III-1 . Institutional Support for Research The research program is overseen by a full-time associate dean for research and graduate studies, who reports directly to the vice president and dean for academic affairs. The associate dean is supported by the office of research and graduate studies with a staff of four including 1.5 administrative assistances, a research compliance officer, and a sponsored programs officer for grants administration. All extramural grants are maintained through the Research Foundation of the State University of New York (SUNY RF). The associate dean is the Institutional Officer for SUNY RF.

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