Teresa Gammill is a visual person.
"'See it to believe it' works for me," says the Mississippi State assistant vice president for research who gets to see some remarkable work every day.
"You think you know what we are doing here, but then you see something and it blows you away. It's really wonderful," she says. "It is amazing when program officers from Washington come to campus to see what our researchers are doing. They leave here with a different mindset."
And relationships with those program officers from federal agencies are very important to the university's research enterprise. In fiscal year 2010, Mississippi State saw some $201 million in external funding for research. Winning grant proposals play a critical role in the funding process.
"My job is to work with our faculty on finding and writing grants that give them the resources they need to be successful," she says. "I couldn't do it without the people I work with. It takes a team effort, and I appreciate them very much."
Gammill is also project administrator for EPSCoR, the university-based Mississippi Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research a five year, $20 million project funded by the National Science Foundation that works to identify, develop and deploy academic science and technology to increase the state's research and development competitiveness and foster economic growth.
"I learn something new every day," she says. "When you're on this campus, you never stop growing."