At the November 1997 NCURA meeting, the consensus in one large workshop
I attended was that sponsored programs offices never stop applications
from being submitted, but at many the school reserves, and sometimes
exercises, the right to withdraw the application after it reviews the
proposal.
 That being said, it seems to me that the business analogy is
inappropriate for sponsored programs offices, and we mislead faculty and
ourselves if we apply it.  A customer unsatisfied with service at a
supermarket can pick another store, but a PI cannot go to another
sponsored programs office down the street.  Sponsored programs offices
aren't subject to market forces: individuals may be fired and the office
may be reorganized, but the function remains at the university, and the
PI has no alternative but to use the one the university provides.
 Instead of portraying ourselves, therefore, as a service whose sole
responsibility  is to please PIs, I think it's wiser to admit frankly
that we have a regulatory function.  Besides PIs, we have two other
constituents--"customers," if you insist on the business metaphor--the
university and the sponsor.  Up to a week or so before the deadline, we
can display flexibility, service-orientation, and all the other virtues
that PIs cherish; after that our complaisance to PIs inversely
proportional to the number of hours before the deadline, because our
principal constituents become the university and the sponsor.  "The
university" isn't an abstraction, either: its the executive who
certifies with his or her signature that the information in the
application is true.
 Obvious examples of inaccurate information that may escape scrutiny in
last-minute applications include exaggerated or understated salaries,
unauthorized cost-sharing, or collaborations which have not been
approved by the collaborator's employer.  Others which I have seen and
which, in my view, are more serious, are listing, in a training grant, a
project which was not funded or under way, as a lab site for trainees;
and describing a core facility essential to the investigator's
experimentation when in fact the facility had closed 18 months earlier.
The motive, of course, is zeal and not mendacity, but sponsors--and
auditors, who now inspect preaward records--do not know this.  Part of
our job is to protect the university from such misrepresentations and to
teach PIs the university's expectation of accuracy.
 For these reasons our office discourages late applications in every way
it can.  With new faculty members we try to be gentle, but I see no
reason to apologize for imposing stress upon PIs  who consistently turn
in late applications.  It turns out here as it seems to as most
places--that the number of offenders is small, and they submit
infrequently.  Strange that they consume so much of our energy and
thought.

--
Peter J. Dolce, Ph.D., Director
Office of Research Support Services
Meharry Medical College
Nashville, TN  37208
P (615) 327 6703
F (615) 327 6716