Enhancing the Georgetown Environment for Funded Research

One of the results of the recent survey of faculty on the main campus is continued concerns about the efficiency and effectiveness of administrative support for their external research grant efforts. This was one of the first issues I heard upon entering as Provost at the end of 2012.

We’ve made three necessary changes in an attempt to improve the processes. First, we named a faculty member, Janet Mann, as the vice-provost for research. Second, we reconstituted the research administration functions outside the Graduate School into a consolidated unit. Third, we hired a director of research administration, Deborah Marshall.

Deb has reviewed many of the processes and talked with faculty and staff throughout the university. We’ve made some steps forward that faculty should know about.

We want to attempt to offer faster service for those faculty preparing proposals for submission. On July 1, 2014, we instituted performance metrics related to speed of service. We seek to finalize any draft proposal submitted within 2 days of receipt and respond to investigator or department inquiries within 24 hours. We seek to resolve 75% of such inquiries on the first call/email. After an award is made we seek to set up accounts within within 10 business days when no additional negotiation with the sponsor is required. On awards requiring negotiations we seek to finalize issues within 45 business days. We aim to prepare subcontracts and send them out within 10 business days of all required documentation being received. We want subcontracts fully executed and finalized within 45 days of start of process.

We’ve examined the workflow of proposals and post-award processing. A workgroup of decision makers from key administrative units—SAO, Risk Management, University Counsel, Tax Office, Procurement, and OSP—has been formed to revise these policies, procedures, and practices. The workgroup is charged by Vice-Provost Mann to improve turnaround time, increase transparency through frequent and consistent communication with the investigator, and be more flexible in its practices.

Many investigators, especially in the Social Science disciplines, have the need for subawards, independent contractor agreements, or consulting agreements to be issued on their sponsored project awards. These investigators want to be able to start the project as soon as the award is finalized. Sometimes, they have less than a year to complete the project. Now, an investigator who fully expects an award in the next 90 days can establish an account for pre-award spending, can begin hiring research staff, and can have agreements generated and sent to the outside party for review, prior to the receipt of the actual award. This has the commitment of leadership in Human Resources, Procurement, MCFO, Sponsored Accounting, Risk Management, and the Tax Office.

We have taken steps to improve the flow of work involving human subjects review committees.

1. Offering a service to all investigators, to review their IRB submission package for completeness and appropriate content, prior to IRB staff review.
2. Adopting a modified approach to evaluating exempt and expedited reviews for non-federal sponsors.
3. Establishing a separate IRB for student applications, which are currently a large part of the social and behavioral science IRB workload.
4. Allowing an IRB staff member to review exempt and expedited applications rather than assigning the review to a committee member.
5. Eliminating annual reporting requirements and replacing them with triennial approval for certain types of research studies.
6. Streamlining application documentation and informed consent templates.

Investigators have been frustrated by a lack of information available to help them write job descriptions for research staff, thus delaying the building of a research team. This information will become more widely available to investigators. It will assist in identifying the correct title for a position based upon the position’s roles and responsibilities. It will also provide starting salary ranges, showing how they compare with other similar positions across the DC Metro area.

We also want to improve the flow of information about new research funding possibilities. We are redesigning the Office of Sponsored Programs website. GUMC, Main Campus, and GU Law are cooperating on an institution-wide electronic newsfeed and an interactive blog. The purpose of these two new communications tools is to transmit important information to investigators, give investigators a forum to ask questions, and facilitate cross-campus collaborations by featuring a larger number of research projects than can be currently accomplished on other GU websites.

Finally, we are establishing a faculty executive committee charged with oversight of the research administrative operations of the main campus.

We have much more to do to provide a supportive environment worthy of our faculty researchers. We’re working on it and thought that everyone should know that.