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Infrastructure

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Infrastructure

Submitted by Christopher Daniels on 5/15/2009 8:31:33 AM   Last updated by Christopher Daniels on 12/8/2009 10:47:56 AM

Every organization that engages in the search and utilization of external funding to support research, training and educational activities, and public service projects, must develop an infrastructure to support those activities. This framework will differ by organization but there are basic functions that must be performed in order to support faculty, administration and sponsor needs. The following list constitutes a good checklist of special value for new sponsored programs offices and for offices doing assessments.

-         Written policies and guidelines for sound fiscal and administrative management
-         Ability to comply with federal circulars and guidelines
-         Adequate equipment tracking
-         Capacity to separately account for projects
-         Identify official(s) legally capable of entering into binding agreements
-         Review of proposed work to ensure institutional capability to successfully carry out a proposed scope of work
-         Capacity to develop accurate and consistent budgets to support a proposed scope of work
-         Comply with federal, state, and local laws and regulations
-         Mission statement
-         Job descriptions
-         Organization chart
-         Reporting units
-         Web presence and relation to institutional home page
-         Staff training programs and PI training programs
-         Databases of proposals and awards, human subjects of research, animal subjects of research, intellectual property

Institutional Capacity Building

Submitted by cdaniels@srainternational.org on 12/8/2009 10:49:51 AM   Last updated by cdaniels@srainternational.org on 12/8/2009 10:49:51 AM

No description for Infrastructure: Institutional Capacity Building has been entered yet.

Original Contributors:
Pamela B. Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Wilmington: whitlock@uncw.edu
Julie Cole, Georgia Southern University: JCole@georgiasouthern.edu

Legal Framework

Submitted by Christopher Daniels on 5/15/2009 8:30:08 AM   Last updated by Christopher Daniels on 3/30/2010 2:03:43 PM


Research administrators must establish sound advisory relations with the institutional legal office without delegating the efficiencies of the administration of research effort. Nor do your lawyers have the time or even want to become immersed in the daily activities that you are responsible for. However, at times it is necessary to request advice from counsel who can also be helpful in drafting or re-drafting contracts or other documents that sponsored programs must approve. A close working relationship with legal experts will ensure compliance and expand teamwork. Some of the larger research-intensive university and research foundations have found it to be convenient to have their own legal offices, especially when intellectual property and copyright protections are a daily matter.

Further information can be gleaned from:

·         Managing Externally Funded Programs at Colleges and Universities: A Guideline to Good Management Practices, November 2001

·         “Contract Basics,” Presentation at NCURA Region III meeting, 1999.  Phil Myers, Pamela Napier, and Deborah Wilkins

·         “Contracting with Industry,” Presentation at NCURA Region III meeting 2005, David Richardson

Original Contributors:
1 Pamela B. Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Wilmington: whitlock@uncw.edu
2 Julie Cole, Georgia Southern University: JCole@georgiasouthern.edu

Organization

Submitted by Christopher Daniels on 5/15/2009 8:25:21 AM   Last updated by Christopher Daniels on 12/8/2009 1:13:05 PM
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Regulatory Environment

Submitted by Christopher Daniels on 5/15/2009 8:11:48 AM   Last updated by Robert Wenger on 5/29/2009 11:17:58 PM

Accepting external funds brings additional responsibilities, including placing into the hands of outsiders some control over your institutional practices, creating legal and fiduciary liabilities, giving outsiders some control of your faculty, and establishing your institution as a trustee of public funds.
 
Sponsors can dictate how you spend their money and how much time you have to spend it, what kinds of activities you can perform with their money, and how often you have to report to them. Once there is a significant dependency upon a particular sponsor’s money, that sponsor can start telling you how to spend your money, how you perform all sorts of activities (not just those related to a sponsored project), and indeed how you are to live your life!
 
Research administrators are required to wear many “hats”. On some occasions, research administrators are called upon to be aware of, to monitor and police, and to enforce the requirements of sponsors. On other occasions, they must deflect inappropriate intrusion by sponsors into the internal affairs of their institutions. On still other occasions, they must represent the best interests of individual researchers.
 
Research administrators are also called upon to write, review, and negotiate all sorts of legal contracts and agreements. Being a research administrator today means knowing quite a bit about the law and studying in-depth the hundreds of Federal, state, and other sponsor regulations. It means knowing about how the Federal government works and when and how to give input to processes that affect their institutions.
 
The regulatory environment consists of government relations activities, the management circulars of the Office of Management and Budget, the laws and regulations of government (federal, state, and local), the regulations of sponsoring agencies, institutional policies, and institutional governing boards. 1

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References:
1. (RAPID, R. Killoren, 1999)

Original Contributor:
1 Pamela B. Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Wilmington: whitlock@uncw.edu
2 Julie Cole, Georgia Southern University: JCole@georgiasouthern.edu

Research Assessment

Submitted by ahitchner@srainternational.org on 12/8/2009 9:30:35 AM   Last updated by Christopher Daniels on 12/8/2009 9:30:35 AM

The assessment of research takes a number of forms, operated at different levels:

  • Project proposals are likely to be subject to assessment, typically peer review, to judge whether they should be funded.
  • Many institutions operate a periodic research review mechanism to assess the performance of their faculties, schools or departments.
  • National systems exist to assess the quality of whole institutions (usually on a subject basis), in order to inform sector-level funding.

The UK has operated a national Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) since 1986, with the most recent one being in 2008.  It is based on the peer review of material submitted by each university.  This produced profiles of quality assessment for each subject in each university, which were then used to etermine annual core research funding.  The areas covered by the profiles were outputs, environment, and esteem.

The UK is currently developing the successor to the RAE, called the Research Excellence Framework.  This is an evolution of the RAE, still based on peer review, but with an increased element of metrics to inform the review.  The areas to be covered will be outputs, environment, and impact.

Other national assessment processes can be found in Australia and New Zealand.

External links:

UK Research Assessment Exercise: www.rae.ac.uk

UK Research Excellence Framework: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/

Excellence in Research for Australia: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/default.htm

New Zealand Performance-Based Research Fund: http://www.tec.govt.nz/templates/standard.aspx?id=588