The Collaborative and Operational Leadership (COLead) project aims to increase the participation of faculty from teaching-intensive institutions (TIIs) in the national research enterprise. Distinct from research-intensive institutions which often have divisions devoted to research (i.e. an Office of Research) and/or senior administrators (i.e. a Vice President of Research) solely dedicated to advancing research activity, research leadership at TIIs is often led by an administrator with multiple duties such as a Provost or Vice Provost. This fragmentation of duties, combined with limited resources to create and support a research environment, may result in lower research productivity among faculty at TIIs. This project addresses this absence of dedicated research leadership through a collaborative leadership model led by the institution’s office of research and sponsored projects (or equivalent) and a guiding body of campus leaders. To increase the participation of faculty from teaching-intensive institutions (TIIs) in the nation’s research enterprise, the goal of COLead is to build capacity and research support infrastructure using a replicable, systematic approach guided by collaborative leadership. The project includes three aims: Aim 1 – Build institutional capacity using a structural collaborative leadership model that provides sustained infrastructure for strategic research and sponsored project leadership, resulting in increased capacity for developing, maintaining,