This discussion reveals a problem common to the research community and to
most institutions:
"Principal Investigator" has multiple meanings.  Many of us are clear in
our own minds which one we are applying at any given moment, but switch
from one to the other -- and we are often unsure what someone else means!

The Principal Investigator is the leader of the scientific team.
The Principal Investigator is the institution's employee responsible for
accomplishing the scientific project.
The Principal Investigator is the institution's employee responsible for
managing the accounts and other business matters needed to accomplish the
project.

Accomplishing these separate duties involves separate, but overlapping,
constellations of skills and knowledge.  If you start to draw up a
comprehensive list of roles and responsibilities, you start to see a need
to separate these roles!

Throw in the complexity of an additional person, a Co-investigator, and
things get murky.  Let that person be at a different institution, and they
get downright muddy!

Pat Hawk's suggestion using the "collaborators" concept for
extra-institutional participating scientists is probably the best way to
separate the scientific responsibilities from the institutional ones.

Chuck

At 09:32 AM 10/17/00 -0500, you wrote:
>We are getting an increasing amount of requests from faculty wanting the
>PIs on subgrants in their proposals to appear as co-PIs on the cover page.
>Even though FastLane offers this as an option in order to get the subgrant
>into the system, we think having a Co-PI from another institution on our
>proposals sets us up for liability and grant administration problems in the
>future.
>
>I would like to hear from other institutions...both those who allow this
>practice and also those who don't allow this practice and the reasoning
>behind it.
>
>Please send your comments to Ellen Rogers at xxxxxx@nd.edu.
>
>Many thanks.
>
>
>===================================================
>"We must walk consciously only partway toward our goal, and
>         then leap in the dark to our success."  -- Henry David Thoreau
>Terri Hall
>Funding Opportunities Specialist / Community of Science Liaison
>Office of Research
>University of Notre Dame                     Phn: (219) 631-8710
>511 Main Building                                Fax: (219) 631-6630
>
>Notre Dame, IN 46556                       Email: xxxxxx@nd.edu
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Herbert B. Chermside, CRA
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Virginia Commonwealth University
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