Packer, an associate dean at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, helped oversee grant awards from the George Washington-Smithsonian Opportunity Fund, which helps students, faculty, and Smithsonian curators collaborate on research. Five projects were each awarded roughly $40,000.
How long have George Washington University and the Smithsonian been partners?
We’ve been working with the Smithsonian through various departments for the last 100 years, but about a year-and-a-half ago a new memorandum of understanding was signed that covers all the various departments and interactions we have with the Smithsonian. We each pledged $100,000 for what they called an opportunity fund to promote research that will be jointly done by faculty here at G.W. and curators at the Smithsonian museums. As I said, we have a history of doing that kind of thing, but there was no real research grants or support behind it from the two institutions.
Will these new grants improve collaboration?
That’s the idea. The idea is actually, while we had people who are working together, the idea was to expand. So they had to be new projects — we did not fund any projects that had been developed over past years.
Is this a one-time grant, or are more funds in the works?
These are relatively small research grants, and we’re hoping that they’ll act sort of as seed money for investigators to get some data and perhaps then submit and have funded a grant proposal that might be sent to the Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation and other larger grant agencies.
Is it common for universities to team up with the Smithsonian?
Yes, and G.W. is not the only one locally that works with the Smithsonian … If you look around the country at both public and private museums, they very often have close ties to institutions in their area.
— Ben Giles
