USC/Arnold School Basic “Boilerplate” Information for Sponsored Award Proposals

The following includes ‘boilerplate’ (basic) information about the University of South Carolina (USC) and the Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH):

• Use only what you need. Include only the information that is pertinent to your proposal (not the whole thing). Note that there is some information overlap between sections.
• Be sure to add specific department, lab, equipment, and collaboration information as needed for your proposal and edit out what is not relevant to it.
• Other UofSC units and external institutions/organizations should be able to supply you with their R&E information upon request.
• Overview and contact information about other ASPH centers and programs is at: 

  https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/public_health/research/research_centers/index.php

USC/Arnold School Boilerplate Document [pdf]  - Updated  October 2025 (Arial 11 pt.)

The University

The University of South Carolina (USC) was established in 1801 and is a full-service, state-assisted research university comprising the 358-acre Columbia campus and seven regional campuses, with a total full-time student body of more than 38,000 in Columbia and 54,000 overall. Located in the capital city of Columbia in the geographic center of the state, USC's main campus is part of a thriving metropolitan area of more than 800,000 inhabitants. USC offers a broad spectrum of educational opportunities with 14 colleges and schools that encompass 324 undergraduate and graduate degree-granting programs. USC confers 25% of all bachelors, graduate, and professional degrees awarded at institutions of higher education in South Carolina.

USC Research Capacity. In fiscal year 2025, USC was awarded $323 million in extramural sponsored award funding, 65% percent of which was for research. USC is listed in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as a Very High Research Activity University.

The University provides researchers with a full range of grant and contract-related services through its Sponsored Awards Management and Grants and Funds Management offices. USC’s Office of Research Compliance oversees the institutional review processes for human and animal subjects as well as disclosure and management of financial conflicts of interest and assists with scientific misconduct regulation and export controls.

The SC SmartState Centers of Economic Excellence program was established by the state's General Assembly in 2002 with $180 million of non-tax revenue funds generated from the South Carolina Education Lottery. These funds, along with legislatively mandated dollar-for-dollar matching non-state funds, provide support for hiring world-class researchers who serve as the endowed chairs of the SmartState Centers. The 51 Centers are grouped into six industry- focused Smart Clusters to facilitate engagement with business, students, potential faculty, and the public. Each Center includes one or more endowed chairs, research infrastructure, technical staff, and sustainable funding sources. USC is home to 27 SmartState Centers, including 18 that are headquartered at USC's Columbia campus and eight within which USC actively collaborates working with other SC research institutions.

USC Libraries. Thomas Cooper, the University’s main library, is centrally located on the

Columbia campus, and the School of Medicine library is a 15-minute drive from central campus. Both libraries maintain an extensive collection of health-related resources, including books, journals, and indices. Access to online databases and full-text journals is available through the Thomas Cooper Library Web page.

USC’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT), under the direction of the Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, oversees centralized and distributed computing and telecommunications services for academic, research, and administrative use to meet the needs of USC faculty, staff, and students. DoIT provides the USC community with computing, voice, and data communications, networking, data security, video transport, information technology training, Web services, customer support, desktop and server support, installation and maintenance of IT infrastructure, policies and procedures assistance, PC labs, software licensing and distribution, IT planning, applications development and support, and operational systems. The Columbia campus is covered by wireless service. USC has a licensing agreement with Microsoft that includes 5 TB of secure cloud storage for every faculty and staff member on OneDrive. Microsoft has signed legal agreements with the University that hold them liable for the security and protection of data stored on OneDrive. OneDrive enables USC researchers to share data and results with external partners by emailing them a link to securely download the data.

The School

The Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH) was founded in 1975 and has an enrollment of over 3,781 students, including 789 graduate students and 2,992 undergraduates, in 38 bachelor, master, and doctoral degree programs that prepare graduates for careers primarily in health agencies, academic institutions, community organizations, and hospitals. The Arnold School employs over 160 tenured/tenure-track, research and clinical (instructional) faculty members. Based at USC's main campus in Columbia, ASPH is one of 67 schools of public health fully accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) and is currently reaccredited until July 1, 2032.

In partnership with Prisma Health and the USC School of Medicine- Greenville, ASPH has established a satellite campus in Greenville, SC where it is establishing clinically relevant research programs and is developing a long-term plan for future expansion to include interdisciplinary graduate degree options that combine public health with clinical medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and other health disciplines. The school’s major goal is to improve public health status by preventing health hazards and by promoting improved health services through its research, education, and service programs. Its mission is to expand, disseminate, and apply the body of knowledge regarding prevention of disease, disability, and environmental degradation, and to promote health and well-being in diverse populations as well as the provision of effective, efficient, and equitable health services.

Arnold School Degree Programs. ASPH offers programs of study at the doctoral, masters, and bachelors levels. Doctoral degrees include Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in seven disciplines and Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT). Master’s degrees include Master of Health Administration (MHA), Master of Public Health (MPH) in four disciplines, Master of Science (MS) in seven disciplines, and Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) in two disciplines. Dual degrees include the Master of Social Work/Master of Public Health (MSW/MPH) offered in cooperation with the College of Social Work with an MPH major of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior or Health Services Policy and Management. The Master of Public Administration/ Master of Public Health dual degree (MPA/MPH) is offered in cooperation with the Department of Political Science with an MPH in Health Services Policy and

Management. Three baccalaureate programs include the BS in Exercise Science and both BA and BS programs in Public Health. The School also offers three certificates of graduate study: global public health, aging, health communications, and environmental nanoscience & risk. The certificate in health communications is administered in collaboration with the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and the School of Library and Information Science. While the School is fully accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health, the DPT, MHA, speech-language pathology, and athletic training programs are accredited by their respective professional groups.

Arnold School Computing Resources. The School maintains numerous computer systems spanning seven sites and includes 32 virtual servers, two student computer labs with 46 workstations, and more than 800 individual faculty, staff, and research computer systems. Five full-time information resource consultants manage and maintain the School's computing resources. ASPH on the Columbia campus is covered by wireless service.

Arnold School Computing Security and Capacity. The School’s datacenter is key-access only by the School’s IT staff members and Dean of the School. The server infrastructure is primarily run on four Dell PowerEdge servers, each with dual 8-core processors and 128GB of memory, running VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0. The virtual servers are stored on a 232 TB Dell SCv3000 SAN (Storage Area Network) running a RAID10 array for redundancy. Production data from that SAN is asynchronously replicated across campus to another Dell SCv3000 SAN for off-site catastrophic data protection. The data center houses five additional physical servers. All servers have APC battery backup power supplies and gigabit Ethernet connections. The data center has full generator backup power and redundant cooling systems. Network shares for users are created via a Distributed File System in Windows Server and are access-controlled via user groups that contain unique IDs and require complex passwords. Network shares are encrypted as needed based on requirements of data agreements.

{See the USC Office of Information Technology (DoIT) section above for additional information about USC-level computing security and capacity}

Arnold School Academic Departments. ASPH is the home of six academic departments: Communication Sciences and Disorders; Environmental Health Sciences; Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Exercise Science; Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior; and Health Services Policy and Management.

Arnold School Interdisciplinary Research Centers. In addition to its six academic departments, ASPH houses multiple interdisciplinary research centers, including the Community Health Worker Institute; the Cancer Prevention and Control Program; the Nutrition Consortium; the CDC-funded Prevention Research Center; the CDC-funded Disability Research and Dissemination Center; the Office for the Study of Aging; the NIH-funded Center for Oceans and Human Health and Climate Change Interactions; the NIH-funded Big Data Health Science Center, and the HRSA-funded Rural and Minority Health Research Center.

Arnold School SmartState Centers. The Arnold School is home to four SmartState endowed chairs who lead Centers of Economic Excellence within the School that focus on stroke and intellectual aging (SeniorSMART™- Memory and Brain Function), healthy lifestyles supported by technology (Technology Center to Promote Healthy Lifestyles - TecHealth), improved orthopedic outcomes (CERortho), and translational clinical research (Center for Healthcare Quality). The Centers involve postdoctoral scholars as well as graduate and undergraduate

students in their innovative, cutting-edge research.

Arnold School Faculty Offices. Each faculty member has a private office with a printer and personal computer with Microsoft Office and additional software relevant to his or her teaching and research, Internet access, telephone, and general office support. Faculty members are furnished with additional office and laboratory space as needed for project support.

Arnold School Research Capacity. ASPH Office of Research staff members assist faculty and departmental staff with proposal development and post-award related activities that promote and support efforts to increase grant and contract funding to the school. The Office serves as a liaison to USC's Sponsored Awards Management office, which reviews and signs off on all grant and contract proposals prior to submission. In the fiscal year 2025, ASPH principal investigators submitted 512 proposal requests. They received $54.2 million from 303 awards: 27 internal and 276 external that included 201 federal; 50 private; 17 state; and 7 others.

Intra-University Collaboration. The Arnold School closely collaborates with the five other schools and colleges of health-related professions that form USC’s Health Sciences Division, including the School of Medicine-Columbia, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy College of Social Work, and the more recently established School of Medicine-Greenville, which was fully accredited in 2015. Investigators from these academic units are actively involved in interdisciplinary research, training, community engagement, and service activities with Arnold School faculty members.

Federal Funding to USC and the Arnold School. The University of South Carolina received $241 million in federal grant and contract awards, or 65% of its total sponsored award funding from all extramural sources in fiscal year 2025. USC’s Arnold School of Public Health received $42.2 million in federal awards, 78% of its total sponsored award funding. NIH provides 58% of the School’s federal grant and contract funding, followed by funding from other federal agencies, including AHRQ, CDC, HRSA, SAMHSA, HHS-Other, DOD, EPA, IMLS, NASA, NOAA, NSF,

USDA, USDE, and the VA.

Health Sciences South Carolina. (HSSC) was founded in 2004 as the nation's first statewide health data and research collaborative, with a mission to transform South Carolina's public health and economic well-being through research. Its members include the state’s largest research-intensive universities (the University of South Carolina, the Medical University of South Carolina, and Clemson University) and the state’s largest healthcare systems (AnMed Health, McLeod Health, MUSC Health, Prisma Health, Self Regional Healthcare, and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System). HSSC also provides financial support to South Carolina’s SmartState Centers of Economic Excellence, which are led by world-class researchers. Research conducted in these centers is leading to new products and services with the potential to improve public health while creating economic development opportunities and new jobs in the state.

The Discovery I building, located in the heart of USC’s 500-acre Innovista research district, is a 115,846-square-foot LEED-certified structure that is home to research labs, academic offices, and centers and institutes. Fully open for occupancy in January 2014, Discovery I houses the Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH) departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Health Services Policy and Management, and Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior as well as offices and research space for the departments of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Environmental Health Sciences, and Psychology. Also located in

the building are the ASPH Office of Research; the Office of Information Technology, which staffs a 34-station computer lab; the Office of Development and Alumni Relations; the Web Development and Communications office; the Cancer Prevention and Control Program; Columbia’s Cooking! an experiential learning kitchen; the Office for the Study of Aging; the Disability Research and Dissemination Center that includes the Coordinating Center for Research to Promote the Health of Children with Birth Defects and People with Developmental and Other Disabilities; the Big Data Health Science Center (BDHSC); the Center for the Study of Aphasia Recovery (CSTAR); the SmartBrain division of the SeniorSMART Center; the SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality; the SmartState Center for Effectiveness Research in Orthopaedics (CERortho); and the SmartState Technology Center for Promoting Healthful Lifestyles (TecHealth).

The Public Health Research Center (PHRC), the second main ASPH building, is located within a block of Discovery I and is a 104,580 square foot LEED-certified building. Constructed in 2006, the PHRC houses offices and laboratories of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Department of Exercise Science, the Center for Environmental NanoScience and Risk, the Center for Oceans and Human Health and Climate Change Interactions, and the Prevention Research Center. The Arnold School Dean’s administrative offices, including Academic Affairs and Graduate and Undergraduate Student Services, also are located in the PHRC.

The Carolina Consortium on Health, Inequalities, and Populations (CHIP) is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students from public health, the social sciences, nursing, and history at the University of Carolina. We conduct innovative research aimed at examining and advancing our understanding of the social processes, including social determinants, that influence our population dynamics and health inequities. CHIP serves as an incubator for the development of grant proposals, research studies, manuscripts, and other work-in-progress; provides a supportive community to foster peer-to-peer and faculty-to-student mentoring; and facilitates collaboration across multiple research areas, including but not limited to children and families, race and immigration, reproductive health, aging and the life course, neighborhoods, and mental health.

The Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) offers collaborators experience and expertise to help partners understand where they are and where they can go. The center aims to create a culture of data-driven action within CARE, and with partners and the larger community. From the evaluation of small projects to complex mixed method research designs, CARE has the flexibility and the capability to handle a wide variety of needs. CARE helps its collaborators to improve public health practice and systems through:

· Evaluating the implementation of programs and initiatives in real world settings

· Engaging communities in all phases of evaluation

· Developing and conducting surveys, focus groups, interviews, and observations

· Managing and analyzing data

· Utilizing cutting edge evaluation techniques like Return on Investment and Ripple Effect Mapping

· Continuous quality improvement services, including process mapping

· Group facilitation, especially in the strategic planning process

The Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA), based at USC’s Arnold School of Public Health, uses evidence-based models and meaningful engagement strategies to co-create solutions with community leaders that address health inequities in South Carolina and nationally. CCHA’s foundational initiatives are PASOs and the Community Health Worker Institute (CHWI). PASOs is a community-based organization that helps the Latino community

and service providers work together for strong and healthy families. Its community health programs include prenatal education, outreach on women’s and family health topics, connection to needed resources, increasing access to health care, cultural competency and development of community leaders. PASOs facilitates support to Latino communities and individuals across the state of SC, and partners with health and social service providers to improve cultural humility and help them offer more effective and accessible services to the growing Latino population. The national Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP) has designated PASOs’ Health Connections program within its highest rank of “Best Practice,” through which community health workers work closely with all members Latino households (men, women, and children) in a variety of settings, including clinics and community-based locations, connecting them with health care and other needed services. CHWI provides community health worker curriculum development and training; recruitment and job placement; technical assistance for health systems towards CHW integration; evaluation and payment model design; and policy development towards sustainable financing and best practices. CCHA also provides capacity building, research and thought leadership around meaningful and effective community engagement and racial and health equity.

The Consortium for Latino Health Studies helps fulfill the USC’s mission to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of all state residents by promoting and coordinating interdisciplinary and transnational research on the experiences of Latino/as in SC and the Southeast.

Based at the USC Arnold School of Public Health, the Consortium is primarily composed of faculty, staff, and students from the USC system who conduct research and collaborate with scholars doing research, training, and planning programs for Latino populations in SC, the US, and several Latin American countries. The Consortium disseminates research findings and other information on Hispanic/Latino issues to academic and non- academic users through conferences, symposia, workshops, and publications and fosters the application and translation this information into practice and policy. Further, the Consortium encourages and supports teaching about Latinos and collaborates with local communities, organizations, and government agencies involved with the state's growing Latino population.

The USC Patient Engagement Studio (PES) integrates patient and community voices at every stage of research—from developing research questions to implementing findings. Through collaborations with patients, scientists, and clinicians, PES enhances health outcomes and ensures that research remains patient centered. PES facilitates both condition-specific panels (e.g., diabetes, breast cancer, aphasia, Long COVID, and HIV) and disease-agnostic panels that include individuals with diverse lived experiences, such as rural residents and those who have interacted with the healthcare system. Our panels reflect diversity across age, gender and sexual identity, race/ethnicity, geography, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status. Researchers can engage with PES through levels of involvement, including Consult and Involve. The Consult model, the most common, provides feedback on specific research aspects during single or limited engagements. The Involve model integrates patients into the research process over time, influencing study design and outcomes. PES also offers free consultation through Idea Lab sessions, providing early feedback on new proposals and facilitating Letters of Support (LOS). Since 2016, PES has supported over 150 projects and collaborated with more than 300 researchers. For more information, visit the PES website or contact Sebrena Brink, PES Manager, at smbrink@sc.edu.