This is a proposal submitted by the Ohio State University Research Foundation for design of a planning and assessment system for the Division of Manpower and Institutions (now Division of Research and Development Resources), U.S. Office of Education. It responds to a need for an expanded planning, management, and assessment system that would enable DMI leaders to make responsible decisions under its new institutional support policy. The proposal suggests a background study; the convening of two advocate teams to develop alternative evaluation strategies; a convergence team to review the competing strategies and generate a third, which could be an elaboration of one of the advocate team strategies, a merging of the best features of the two, or a completely new strategy; and a means for judging the competing strategies. (Author)