Our sponsored programs activities are highly centralized, with no
departmental support, and few experienced colleagues.  We handle pre- and
post- award activities totaling less than $5 million.

Our grants specialists work with:
sign-on sheets
advance notification of expected proposals - to the president and VPAA
sign-off sheets, including tracking proposals as they are in process of
obtaining the 5+ signatures for sign-offs
budget counseling and budget preparation
cost-sharing descriptions and ensuring sign-off by appropriate folks
electronic submission
set-up information and announcements
project director meetings
pre-encumbrance monitoring
providing answers to and being a participant in meetings with
 PI's, chairs, deans, business affairs,etc
providing periodic budget assessments
certification of efforts
close-outs
working with auditors of specific programs

We spend 2-3 months intensively with new grants specialists before we begin
to feel like we are getting more out of the new person than we are putting
in.  For people without strong computer or spreadsheet backgrounds, it is
even more.  After the first 3 months through an entire year, we have to
continue training and oversight.  Such long continued oversight is probably
due to all the post-award pieces, including close-outs.  Note, the grants
specialists do not provide the final review of budgets from the Sponsored
Programs office.

I look forward to hearing other responses since I suspect that it is only a
matter of time before we also will be under similar pressures, given the
feeling of our state government that universities should continue to take
budget cuts.
Janet

At 04:30 PM 3/15/01 -0800, you wrote:
>I am seeking assistance from my learned colleagues. For those of you
>who are involved with training brand-new research administrators (no past
>experience) whose responsibilities are focused on pre-award review and
>approval of proposals (including budget review of primarily
>multi-disciplinary
>and multi-year science proposals, certifications and assurances, grant
>transfers,
>electronic proposal submissions, and all the other related pre-award stuff),
>what
>is the "approximate" time that you have estimated for the training process
>(from
>the point you begin training to the point where new employees are expected
>to
>function on their own)? I realize this time-frame changes given the
>individual, the
>quality and time allowed for training, and the complexity at each
>university, as well
>as understanding that all new employees can begin making some contributions
>even
>during the training process.
>
>I am seeking to gather data/responses to address a persistent expectation
>that
>brand-new sponsored programs administrators ought to be trained in the above
>
>responsibilities in a matter of just a couple of weeks and then they should
>be able
>to handle responsibilities on their own with little to no further
>training/oversight.

******************************************************************************
Janet M. Hahn, C.R.A.                   xxxxxx@radford.edu
Executive Director                              phone: 540-831-5035
Sponsored Programs & Grants Management  fax: 540-831-6636
Radford University
Radford, VA 24142-6926                  http://www.runet.edu/~sponsrpr/

======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
======================================================================