Characteristic of Excellence Overview: External funding is essential for the development of a rich, productive, and cutting-edge faculty-student research environment. Although the availability and importance of external funding for research varies by discipline and sometimes by state and region, an institutional culture of supporting and encouraging the acquisition of external research funding is important to sustain research. Very few institutions have sufficient resources to sustain a viable research program with internal funding alone. Rather, institutions and faculty must partner to leverage internal funding with external funding to sustain strong undergraduate research programs and infrastructure over the long term. It should be emphasized that competitiveness in external funding is directly related to research productivity, that is, the production of peer-reviewed research scholarship. External funding comes with increased expectations for the dissemination of peer-reviewed projects. To sustain an excellent undergraduate research program, institutions must provide an environment in which faculty have the time necessary to meet the increased expectations for publication or other recognized types of dissemination.