I guess we have all been reading the responses to the "philosophical"
question with interest.  (Certainly more entertaining than ILI stuff.)
Here's my Memorial Weekend contribution.

What if a dean of a school or college decided that she should be the
official representing the institution on grant proposals coming from her
faculty?  At most of the 3000+ colleges and universities in the country
deans outrank directors of research or sponsored programs by evident
differences in pay, authority over large budgets, and a variety of other
measures.  They are "of the institution" in the same way, they report
(generally) to the same person, who (generally) has not a clue what the
rules and regulations governing submissions of proposals are.  Directors of
Research are delegated signatures from VicePresidents, Provosts, and
Presidents.  Deans are delegated operational managers vested with
considerable responsibility, including it should be noted, (at this campus
anyway) with major responsibility for the carrying out of grants and
contracts in which their faculty are involved!

Deans would be my candidates to sign off "for the institution" on many
grounds.  This would leave Directors of Research/Sponsored Programs with
nothing to do but compliance issues in human subjects, animals, DNA, other
biohazards, patent, copyright, internal policy development (like conflict of
interest), and (more to the point) time to go out and work the territory of
state, local, private, industrial, commercial, and k-12 constituencies.
Their offices would continue to be in the loop, particularly for beginning
proposal writers and for the technical baloney we deal with daily.  The only
difference would be that they would not have to take responsibility (where
they have little control anyway) for slovenly, misconceived, and otherwise
doomed proposals. (We do not get many of these, by the way.  Time is to
precious, even for the deluded.)

Where pre- and post-award are separated by organization and source of
funding, as here, post-award would be picking up more pieces than currently,
but to my mind this would not be excessive.

The reason I have presented this suicidal point of view is this:  I believe
the computer-mediated present and certainly the visible future are going to
be quite different from the 1965-1985 model of information dispensing
characteristic of bureaucratic offices (no apologies for that term) of all
kinds including ours.  With careful planning and presentation the internet
(web and e-mail) provides a completely open and asynchronous (that means
private and not embarrassing) source of information and lore the likes of
which we have been careful to carry around in our heads.  Moreover, the
medium is ubiquitous and is used by proposer and grantor alike.
Middlepeople like ourselves must review our roles!

I will hazard this guess:  in twenty years most sponsored programs offices
(pre-award) will be run by marketing and information specialist types, and
deans will be the authorized institutional officials for proposals from
their faculty.

I guess we should say something about context, too.  Tenure will be half
gone; trade unionism will be confined to California, which will rank just
below Turkmenstan, North Korea and the Faulkland Islands in per capita
expenditures in what will be euphemistically referred to as higher
education; Phoenix /  National / and DeVry will have satellite downlinks in
every city  50k or larger (this takes on special meaning when you consider
that right now there are over a hundred and ten cities in the L.A. region
alone (even before the Valley secedes, you know)); the English language will
have the gender structure of Spanish, the vocabulary of Basque, and all
sentences will end in at least three Germanic prepositions;  research will
be confined to gerontology and cold fusion and administered through block
grants only through states with North, South, or West in their names
(Virginia will complain about this vehemently until it is announced that
these self-same states will also be designated as nuclear waste parking
lots); BUT, to make it all palatable, the U.S. Department of Education will
be given a new lease on life (odd expression, if I every heard one) and will
absorb Energy (so they can put in something larger than 60 watt bulbs in
their dank, labyrinthine corridors), Commerce (because there will be a huge
trade on student vouchers not to mention pari-mutuel betting on voucher
serial numbers out of Vegas),  Justice (because the J. Edgar Hoover Bldg.
will be the obvious and moral place from which to govern the Department),
and NASA (for reasons which will become apparent on the X-Files this summer.)

(Yes, I know that was all one sentence. QED)
Jim

James R. Brett, Ph.D.
Director, Office of University Research
California State University, Long Beach
310-985-5314
310-985-8665 fax
xxxxxx@csulb.edu
http://www.csulb.edu/~wwwing/research.html