Re: A Plea for Your Experience in Enforcing Grant Submission Deadline s Jon Hart 02 Mar 2004 09:45 EST

See my comments, below.

Jon Elizabeth Hart, MPA, CIP
Senior Director, Sponsored Programs Administration
Senior Director, Human Subjects Protections Program
The Rockefeller University
1230 York Ave., NY, NY 10021-6399
tel:  (212) 327-8054; fax:  (212) 327-8400
email:  xxxxxx@rockefeller.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG] On
Behalf Of McCann, John
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 2:15 PM
To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
Subject: [RESADM-L] A Plea for Your Experience in Enforcing Grant
Submission Deadline s

Our business office is currently in the process of developing a policy
to
enforce lead time requirements for approval signatures which would - in
effect - lengthen our internal grants approval process and impose a
grants
submission deadline.  I think such deadlines are unenforcable and
undesirable.  The job of our grants office is to facilitate grants
submission, not impose barriers - and PIs have major time investments in
grant proposals.  While we specify that PIs should allow at least seven
working days for internal reviews - and we yelp at late submissions - we
always submit viable proposals.

I know that the list has discussed this subject in the past, and I've
found
those e-mails, but I'd really appreciate a large number of you briefly
answering these three questions and providing the names of your
institutions:

1.  Does your institution enforce grants submissions deadlines?

Jkh:  We try.

2.  Why or why not?

JKH:  We are a very hands-on grants office and do a lot for the
investigators, such as put together their budgets, help with the Other
Support information, negotiate with the subcontractors' grant offices,
etc., and provide compliance monitoring.  We don't have departments here
(due to our collaborative philosophy), so the duties that departmental
administrators and secretaries would usually fill are shunted to us by
default.  We encourage the investigator to get in touch with us as early
as possible, and often we assist in the funding search.  We ask for a
draft of the proposal two weeks before the sponsor deadline, and the
final (with a draft of the science) two days before.  Time permitting,
we also proofread/edit the document, especially for those investigators
whose first language is not English.  Unfortunately, not all
investigators have administrative support and have to scrounge, which
complicates things.   Do we get applications on time?  Usually.
However, we usually know it's coming (phone or email notification) if we
do get it late.  We have a grants management specialist assigned to each
lab for womb-to-tomb assistance, so they usually know what is going on
and keep in touch with their labs at upcoming deadline times.  I must
admit we have also resorted to a LARGE red stamp, "Insufficient Time to
Review," which we stamp on the to-do sheet that goes back to the
investigator with the application (signed or unsigned).   Obviously, if
an investigator is truly swamped for some good reason, we will do
everything we can to help get it out, save type it for them.  This calls
for late nights on deadlines, but we have a loyal faculty and they like
our service.  You may want to look at our web site (a work in progress)
at www.rockefeller.edu -- click on departments, then Sponsored Programs.
I should add that for those investigators (usually newbies) who come at
the last minute with pencil scribblings and "a mess in a box" we usually
recommend they wait for the next deadline and do some more thinking
about it.
Hope this helps.

Joni.
------------------------------
Thank you........

John McCann, M.P.A., Ph.D.
Academic Grants Manager
Office of the Academic Vice President and Provost
The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, WA 98505

E-mail: xxxxxx@evergreen.edu
Phone: 360-867-6045
Fax: 360-867-6745

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