PrintVice Provost for Research Dr. David Korn Speaks on Sponsor Administrative Regulations
Pat Fitzgerald introduced Dr. David Korn, the newly appointed Vice Provost for Research. In the nineties, Dr. Korn was at Stanford, where he and his colleagues endured a major audit of sponsored research expenditures. He never wants to go through that again. He stated that faculty must be prepared to follow sponsor regulations if they accept sponsored funding. He also said that Harvard should make a bigger investment in compliance now, to ensure that our staff are adequately trained and our faculty adequately supported, as an insurance policy against future scrutiny from the federal government. Finally, he said that his sources have revealed that the NIH Inspector General’s Office is hiring auditors, and everyone expects those auditors to follow the stimulus funding out to universities like Harvard.
As VPR, Dr. Korn plans to review existing research policies with an eye towards standardizing them across Harvard schools. He will also work to promote interdisciplinary research collaboration. Before becoming VPR on November 15, 2008, Dr. Korn served as senior vice president for biomedical and health sciences research and chief scientific officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Prior to this, he was at Stanford as a faculty member and dean for almost three decades.
Stimulus Proposal Requests Must be Reviewed and Submitted via the Office for Sponsored Programs
Apparently, some program officers have been asking faculty to send revised budgets and scopes of work in order to apply for stimulus funding. Obviously, stimulus funding requests need to go to the sponsor as quickly as possible. However, faculty members need to know that the official request must be made through Harvard and must be designated as “stimulus funding” to facilitate administrative reporting and account setup.
Warning: Grants.gov Is Having Major Backlogs
Grants.gov may not have adequate system capacity to handle the influx of proposals for stimulus funds. Even before the stimulus funding was announced, OSP personnel have on occasion stayed up long into the night to submit proposals, and it has taken up to two weeks to get word from grants.gov that a proposal has been accepted. To maximize the chances of having proposals accepted, please make every effort to help your faculty members get their submissions to FAS RAS and OSP as far in advance of the sponsor deadline as possible.
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Funding Opportunities as of 3/20/09 Summarized
The NIH and NSF have issued guidance on applying for stimulus funding. Major deadlines for NIH are: April 27 for Challenge Grants and April 21st for Competitive Revision Applications. NIH also plans to issue “Administrative Supplements” to provide additional funding for active grants. These requests have no strict deadline, other than “ASAP.” NSF plans to use most of the ARRA funding to fund a backlog of worthy but unfunded proposals.
For complete information on ARRA funding, please see the following sites:
Vice Provost for Research Federal Stimulus Funding site.
Office for Sponsored Programs ARRA site.
All Research Faculty Must Certify FY08 Effort by March 31st.
Alan Long is enlisting the help of department effort coordinators. Certification of effort is mandated by Harvard and the federal government and must be completed by March 31st.
Online “Cost Principles” Course is Now Available
Eileen Nielsen, Compliance Director at the School of Public Health, demonstrated the “Cost Principles” online course available via Harvard's web-based learning management system, Eureka. It includes a topic menu, glossary, links to OMB Circular A-21, animated dialogues between researchers and research administrators and practice questions where learners can make choices and get immediate feedback. The course should take about forty-five minutes, and users may save their work, leave, and come back to the course at any time. Additional modules will be added in future months.
The Cost Principles course can be accessed by anyone with a Harvard PIN at this URL: http://eureka.harvard.edu/Eureka/course_template/course.cfm?CourseID=255
NCURA RADG Meeting April 1: Effort Reporting: Audit Findings and Options for Safeguarding Your Department and Institution
Region One of the National Council of University Research Administrators is having the above Research Administrator Discussion Group (RADG) Meeting on Wednesday April 1st from 10-12 in Boston. It will feature FAS’s own Alan Long, and effort-reporting experts from Partners Healthcare, Hogan & Hartson, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. For more information and to register, click HERE.
Guidance on Graduate and Postdoc Stipends
In general, federal research grants provide compensation (salary and tuition) in exchange for work performed while training grants and fellowship awards provide a stipend for living expenses. The new Guidance for Stipends on Sponsored Awards document, which includes a Frequently Asked Questions section, describes this new guidance in detail, as well as the rationale behind it.
Administrative Effort on Stimulus Funding
Pat Fitzgerald reports that FAS and the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR) have been exploring the idea of budgeting administrative salaries in stimulus-funded project proposals to have a better chance of meeting stimulus plan reporting requirements, which are much more stringent than for regular awards.
Click here to download Huron Consulting Group’s “Recent News Affecting Research Operations Resulting from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009”, which includes a list of NIH stimulus reporting requirements and proposal criteria.
Click here to download the COGR letter to the Office of Management and Budget. Subject: “Ensuring Accountability and Transparency for Research Funds Provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”
