At Texas Tech, Research Services reports to the Vice Provost for Research
and Grants and Contracts Accounting reports to the Associate VP for Business
Affairs. G&C handles accounting and billing. Research Services handles all
pre-award and some post-award, including budget revisions, extensions, and
any issues related to technical reporting. Within the past two years we've
thought seriously about combining the two offices under the Vice Provost,
but it seems to be a dead issue at present. The sticking point was office
location. G&C did not want to combine if we could not be located together
and also wanted to be close to accounting, travel, purchasing, etc. as they
are now. Since there was no space in their building for us, it was
impossible to meet this requirement. I think that a combined office would be
more efficient and probably more service-oriented, but as it is, we have a
good working relationship. Some of our faculty members were concerned that
the service orientation of Research Services would change for the worse and
so were not especially excited about the merger.

I doubt that all this is very instructive for you. It just points out that
institutions do things for very different reasons.
Kathleen Harris
Assistant Vice Provost for Research
Texas Tech University
xxxxxx@ttu.edu
Phone - 806/742-3884
FAX - 806/742-3892