Dear Listers --

In our experience, there are two issues: 1) the concern that poorly
written/costed, insufficiently reviewed/approved proposals are being
submitted from our institution and 2) the stress that last minute proposals
cause our staff, for once they have been turned over to us, any
failures--regardless of cause, excuse, circumstances--will reflect on us. We
have a University policy that states that any proposal should be ready for
approval review 48 hours prior to its submission. Is this policy followed by
the Principal Investigators? About half the time. Is this policy enforced by
our office? Never--as in we will not refuse a proposal.  When I become aware
of a proposal coming to us within the 48 hour period (and, sometimes, this
isn't until it actually lands in our office), I e-mail our VP Research, the
PI, his/her Chairman and Dean or Research Center Director and let them know
that we will be receiving a proposal after the deadline period and will make
every effort to submit it on time but cannot guarantee a timely submission.
To date, this has worked well--we haven't missed a deadline but the warning
takes a lot of the burden of fault, guilt, whatever off our office and it
also makes the Chairs and Deans/Directors aware of the chronically
last-minute people. Any really effective enforcement will have to come from
those offices anyway.

I think we have to be very careful about setting ourselves up as enforcers
and developing a them against us outlook regarding the Principal
Investigators. I will be the first to admit that we have a very delicate and
sometimes conflicting set of tasks to manage--service and quality/compliance
monitoring--but we must always remember that our offices exist because of
these researchers and the work they do. While sponsored project
administration is usually all that we do, it is only a small part of what
the Principal Investigators have to fit into their days.

Val Seaquist
Office of Research Administration
University of Alabama in Huntsville

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