Outstanding Staff Performance
John Crockett, Ph.D.
San Diego State University
Associate Vice President, Research Advancement
Every day, I get to focus on removing obstacles and adapting systems that move SDSU scholars one step closer to their vision of the future, and support them to, in turn, invite our students to share in that vision, and make some part of it their own.”
Dr. John Crockett has been credited for invigorating the university’s research enterprise by determining what objectively measurable, functional contributions he and his team can make that leverage SDSU scholars’ intrinsic excellence. As a result, SDSU has been able to grow its research activity by more than 40% in just five years, now exceeding $192 million in external research activity in 2023.
Crockett’s contributions have been built on five key pillars: research development; support for all CSU campuses; successful interdisciplinary team formation through his own funded work; active contributions to improve the satisfaction and productivity of faculty and faculty teams; and his personal philosophy and approach to service leadership.
With his team, Crockett has supported the training of more than 300 new faculty members on the San Diego State campus and many more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. One of his group’s signature programs is the Grants Research and Enterprise Writing (GREW) fellowship, which coaches early-career faculty members on communicating effectively with grant officers, developing successful proposals and sharing their research with media and other stakeholders. In the last several years, his team has developed and implemented a new version for students and postdoctoral fellows, as well as provided other support for grant submissions.
Crockett has been active in the CSU network of chief research officers, giving presentations on how to recognize faculty, how to support their scholarly activities and how to form teams. As a founding PI of the Center for Research, Excellence, and Diversity in Team Scholarship (CREDITS), led by SDSU/UC Santa Barbara, he was part of a group that outlined and established best practices in team formation and management.
For the past decade, Crockett has also worked to foster the expertise of early‐career faculty at SDSU. With an emphasis on equity, he and his team received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for, and designed an intervention focused on, preparing early‐career scholars to contribute equitably within science teams and be credited for their contributions.
His colleagues concur that the unifying theme throughout his academic career—and the standard for his team – has been a deep commitment to service leadership and professional growth.
Crockett received his bachelor’s degree in earth and environmental science from Wesleyan University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in marine geology and geophysics from the University of Washington.