As you may know, the FDP and NCURA are undertaking a joint project related
to Electronic Approval and Routing Systems, known affectionately as "EARS"
for short.  The objective of this taskforce is to investigate, design,
develop, test and distribute alternative solutions for an electronic
research administration system module to do institutional routing and
approval of contract and grant proposals and other research-related
documents.  More information about this task force and its plans can be
found on either the EARS Workgroup section of the FDP website, or on the
NCURA website at:

 http://www.dml.georgetown.edu/fdp/ea.html
 -0r-
 http://nhse.cs.rice.edu:80/ncura/

We are extremely interested in having a *diverse* group of institutions
participate in this project, in order that we can develop a set of
solutions that will work for many different types of institutions.  So far,
21 different institutions (some FDP member institutions, some with NCURA
members, some both) have expressed an interest in participating in
the Phase I of the project, which includes includes the investigation of
the current state of the art in this area, and an evaluation of the needs
and potential solutions which seem most viable.  The diversity of this
group is impressive, ranging from institutions with fewer than $10M in
federal research support to more than $220M, and including both public and
private institutions and one hospital.

We are interested, however, in adding several more institutions to the
group, and we have targeted the following "high need" areas in particular:

 * Public institutions having approx. $30 - $50M in federal
 research support

 * Public or private institutions with less than $30M
 in federal research support

 * Public institutions with between $100 - $200M
 in federal research support

 * Hospitals or research institutes of any size

If you are an FDP member institution or an NCURA member and are interested
in having your institution participate in Phase I, please contact either
Nancy Wilkinson or myself BY TUESDAY, AUGUST 12TH.

It is *not* necessary that your institution be currently working on an
electronic routing system to participate in Phase I, but volunteers are
assumed to be interested in such a development.  We do, however, ask
volunteers to actively participate in discussions and workgroup tasks.
If you are interested in this area but don't feel that you have time to
participate actively, please feel free to stay abreast of developments in
this area by perusing the web sites listed above at regular intervals.

We are posting this invitation to a number of different listservs, so our
apologies if you get this message more than once.

-- Nancy Wilkinson and Pamela Webb (Co-Chairs)
 xxxxxx@osp.emory.edu & xxxxxx@omni.ucsb.edu

Pamela A. Webb
Manager, Sponsored Projects
University of California, Santa Barbara
Phone:  (805) 893-4036
Fax:  (805) 893-26ll
Email:  xxxxxx@omni.ucsb.edu