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UB to consolidate sponsored services
Merging pre- and post-awards services to aid faculty in obtaining grants
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
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The two offices handling pre-award and post-award services for UB researchers will merge in order to provide better overall service for faculty members seeking grants and other funding opportunities.
The merger of Grants and Contracts Administration and Sponsored Programs Administration is the top recommendation to come from the Sponsored Programs Improvement Initiative (SPII), a key element of the academic support planning operation of the UB 2020 strategic planning process.
Among other recommendations from the initiative, made public at a "town hall meeting" held on Aug. 25 in Knox Hall, are that the new, merged organization—which has yet to be named—report jointly to the vice president for research and the executive vice president for finance and operations; that three "life-cycle" teams that are aligned to principle investigators be created and supported by a central office within the new organization; and that a training function be added to the new unit.
Scott Nostaja, a representative of AVCOR Consulting—the firm UB has engaged to facilitate the UB 2020 planning process—led the town hall meeting, offering an update on the initiative and outlining the various recommendations.
Nostaja noted that the starting point for the sponsored programs initiative grew out of early discussions regarding UB 2020 and the academic support function.
"All of those (discussions) seemed to point in a single direction when it came to issues around both pre- and post-award services. The message seemed to be that this was an opportunity for the campus to improve some services," he said. "There was a general feeling that there were good people in both the pre- and post-award offices, but a lot of confusion about roles and responsibilities, and some concerns about the quality of services and the consistency of services provided by those offices."
Nostaja pointed out that faculty members felt that "it wasn't clear" where pre-award services end and post-award services start. "There's a gray zone in there," he said, noting that principle investigators or departmental administrators often get caught in a "maze of phone calls" when trying to obtain information.
There also had been some staff turnover in the offices, and some faculty members were concerned that staff could be more knowledgeable, he said.
The general feeling was, 'Wouldn't it be great if these things were integrated?'" he said.
Once the Sponsored Programs Improvement Initiative started, a team was charged with looking at—and fixing—everything that had to do with pre- and post-award services.
During the course of their work, SPII team members conducted some external assessments to learn how other universities handled pre- and post-award services, Nostaja said.
The team discovered that about half to two-thirds of the universities surveyed had consolidated those services. But all of those surveyed-including those institutions that had not consolidated due to political or other reasons-agreed that consolidation was the "wave of future," and that if an institution could merge services, it should do so, he said.
The team also made a site visit to Harvard University, which merged its pre-award and post-award offices last October. Nostaja noted that despite some initial mistakes, Harvard now has a "really robust, consolidated organization."
The Harvard visit prompted the team to add staff training, both for those handling pre- and post-award services and those working with investigators in the departments, to its list of recommendations, he said.
UB also has adopted the "life-cycle" concept within the merged organization, in which a single "life-cycle" team will manage all elements of a grant or contract, Nostaja said. Three life-cycle teams will be organized around disciplines, and will operate under a central office within the merged organization, he said.
"We know that the merger of these two organizations (Grants and Contracts Administration and Sponsored Programs Administration) by itself doesn't solve all the problems, but we think it enables the improvement of a lot of things," such as creating a single point of contact for PIs and a single database, and allowing for the application of common processes, common training approaches and consistent services, Nostaja said.
"We think it begins to improve pre- and post-award services; it's not a silver bullet to improve everything, but we think it's a good start."
He said the team is working to complete the merger by mid-November.
"It may be a bit of an aggressive timeline, but so far we're on track to do that," he said.