At University of Wisconsin-River Falls, only the Chancellor, Vice
Chancellor, and Assistant to the Chancellor for Administration
have authority to commit the resources of the university to
outside agencies.  If none of them are available when a grant
proposal has to go out, I ask the Associate Vice Chancellor to
sign; if all those folks are away from campus, I find the senior
dean.  (That's only happened once.  When we got the grant, the VC
was quite puzzled as to why that dean was getting all the
correspondence.)

I'm not interested in having signature authority in the Grants
Office.  I work closely with faculty/staff as they are writing
proposals; I prefer to be their advocates before the signing
authority, rather than be the authority myself.  And I write
quite a few proposals myself.  It would not be appropriate for me
to authorize a proposal I have written.

We have an approval form for grant proposals, of course.
Applicants must acquire signatures from department chair, dean,
grants office, and business office, as well as the institutional
authority.

Wm. E. Campbell
Director, Grants and Research
UW-River Falls
xxxxxx@uwrf.edu