Advancement & StrategyFaculty Training ProgramsInformation SessionsIntroduction to the Office of Research and the Life Cycle of a Grant

Introduction to the Office of Research and the Life Cycle of a Grant

Lydia Baxter-Howard, MS, from the Office of Research provides an overview of how the Office can help you to develop and submit a grant proposal, ensure you have a compliant research program, and Karen Biggs from Commercialization presents and intro to how the office can help you manage and license your intellectual property.

Relevant Links

Lydia Baxter-Howard: All right. So that number of people joining the zoom seems to have kind of stabilized. So I’m going to go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming to our first information session of the semester. In introduction to the WSU Office of Research and the lifecycle of a Grant. My name is Lydia Baxter Howard, and I’m a proposal development specialist with the Advancement and Strategy team within the Office of Research.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: going to see if you’ve been to one of these presentations before you’re familiar with the Office of Research

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Some of the names have changed a little bit, and I will try to, bring up the former name to kind of, give some continuity to this information. So the WSU Office of Research itself has deep expertise across diverse branches of the research enterprise. If you’re looking for a quick summary of legal, financial and ethical guidelines and policies, you can find links to that under Guidelines and policies, which is that first linked, item up there. Throughout this presentation

Lydia Baxter-Howard: aAnything that is red and underlined is a link and so when you get the presentation, there’s tons more information that even I’m going to be able to get through available through those links.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: As

Lydia Baxter-Howard: I’m sure you’re all aware, federal policy changes are rapidly reshaping academic research. And, our office has been maintaining a page of federal updates that are most relevant to the research enterprise enterprise, which you can access at that federal updates link. The WSU system itself has a really extensive list, list of service centers and research instrumentation

Lydia Baxter-Howard: that

Lydia Baxter-Howard: are available for faculty to use, typically and typically to outside collaborators, depending on the type of instrumentation. If you’re not sure what capability meets your specific needs, the relevant you can contact a relevant service center or at the Information and centers website you can actually fill out a request for information, and that will route you to the correct personnel.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The Office of Research also maintains its own news page, where you can learn about the latest research across the WSU system. If you’re not already subscribed, also, you can find links to our two newsletters the Research Radar and Funding slash on the OR News page as well. And then finally, if you are unaware of the research strengths at WSU, those are detailed, on the Office of Research website as well.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: I do want to mark that with the caveat that the strengths are something that we are constantly assessing. These are kind of the first iteration and first or second iteration of the strengths that have come out. And so don’t, don’t feel worried if you don’t see, your work, represented there. Okay. So the Office of Research itself has several different teams within it.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The first is going to be the Advancement in Strategy team, which is formerly ORAP. And we offer faculty training and information sessions focused on all things pre award and proposal development. So this includes tailored funding searches at faculty request managing limited submission competitions. We also really our our bread and butter is proposal development services one on one.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Either for individual faculty or for teams working on multiple PI proposal applications. We will work alongside your research administrator and you’ll hear me bring up your RA or research administrator a lot, in this presentation. And it’s really essential that they are always part of the proposal process. We don’t want to take work away from them, and we don’t want them to be unaware of the proposal process that’s happening within their college.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So always make sure you’re looping your RA in, if you work with any of our, any of our entities in Office of Research. So alongside your RA, we can kind of plug into the process for final edits as you’re writing a proposal. We can provide non-specialists for review. Or if you’re early in the process of your proposal writing, we can, help you put together a timeline for the various application components.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Anything to kind of make the process a little bit less overwhelming. This will also include setting up regular meetings to help you track progress and help you develop templates for specific proposal components.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Some of

Lydia Baxter-Howard: these components are already available, or some of these templates are already available in our Research Development Toolbox, which I will, touch on a little bit later. The second team I want to highlight within the Office of Research is Support and Operations. So you will probably know them as ORSO. So their role encompasses really either side of the proposal submission process within the award life cycle.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Their office conducts the final review of the proposal package before it’s submitted, approves the eREX which you’ll hear a little bit more about later, and hits the submit button on behalf of the university. If your RA isn’t able to answer your question, about one of the proposal submission platforms such as Grants.gov, assist, Research Archive, etc., reach out to Support and Operations. And then additionally, if institutional approval is required to create a profile on any of these platforms, these submission platforms Support and Operations has the permissions to do that.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: If you’re lucky enough to receive funding from the agency following the agency’s review process, the Support and Operations team negotiates and accepts the award based on on behalf of WSU. And then finally, they also along with partners on the Innovation and Entrepreneurship or Commercialization team.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: They can help with any questions about non-monetary agreements. Our next Team within OR is the Assurances team, formerly ORA. So in the Office of Research, they play an essential role in the research process overseeing presidential and safety committees

Lydia Baxter-Howard: at

Lydia Baxter-Howard: the university. So this includes the radiation Safety Committee, the institutional Biosafety

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Committee,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And the Institutional Review Board, and the Animal Care and Use Committee. Additionally, if your work involves any kind of hazardous materials, you want to work with, the assurances to make sure that you’re compliant with any relevant user handling procedures. And then additionally, the the assurances team brings awareness and can give insight to the complex set of feder federal regulations known as export controls.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: If your work involves anything global or international. This can include anything from travel to hosting foreign visitors to international shipping. Check out the export controls page or reach out to the assurances team to ensure you’re compliant. Our next group in OR is the campus veterinarian. So this office oversees all aspects of animal health and welfare at WSU.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: They can

Lydia Baxter-Howard: assist with, ensuring that animal health, welfare and regulation

Lydia Baxter-Howard: are

Lydia Baxter-Howard: within regulation and compliance. If your work involves any kind of animal transport. And they’ll also work closely with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, or IACUC and the Animal Welfare program at WSU, to make sure animals are receiving the best possible care. If you have any IACUC

Lydia Baxter-Howard: protocol questions or end up having amendments, you’re going to be working with the campus veterinarian on those in partnership with assurances. The assurances team. Next, we have the commercialization team at, and the Office of Research, and they are really the go-to

Lydia Baxter-Howard: group

Lydia Baxter-Howard: for maximizing impact beyond the typical path of grants and publications. And we’ll hear a little bit more from, Karen Biggs, who is our representative today on this on this meeting for the commercialization team.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: a little bit later in this presentation, they really do so much more than patents. If you believe that you have something novel in your research program, whether it’s a new procedure.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: New material tool or technology, reach out to the team as soon as possible even before submitting an article for review and publication. They very intimately know the rules regarding intellectual property, such as inventions and patents, as well as copyright and trademarking. And they can give you a great rundown of how, faculty can benefit from disclosing new ideas or innovations

Lydia Baxter-Howard: that can move on to the licensure process. Finally, the last arm of the Office of Research is the labs, centers and institutes, which are housed across the WSU system. So these units span focuses from environmental research.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: to

Lydia Baxter-Howard: university computing efforts,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: to

Lydia Baxter-Howard: media and health promotion, as well as taxation research and policy.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So if you’re

Lydia Baxter-Howard: looking to diversify collaborative work within your research program beyond the normal circle of colleagues, this is a great place to

Lydia Baxter-Howard: start looking

Lydia Baxter-Howard: for potential partners.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: I want to call your attention to, this guidelines and policy link here. So the main link at the top of the page, it links to one of our OR pages that has the most relevant guidelines and policies, apart from, I believe, the link to EPA 38 for IP tech transfer and commercialization. We provide this guidance really to make sure researchers and their projects adhere to legal, financial and ethical requirements.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And in addition to these guidelines and policies, these pages offer helpful suggestions on who to contact if you have any questions.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And will direct you to a relevant expert at WSU. Okay. I want to preface this really great figure with the caveat that this is a representation of the general life cycle of research,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: of a

Lydia Baxter-Howard: research award. It’s not uncommon for article, for items in this kind of timeline to run concurrently or in a slightly different order than is represented here, depending on the work being done. But this does give you an overall view or overall idea of

Lydia Baxter-Howard: the

Lydia Baxter-Howard: complexity and number of processes involved in the life cycle of a research award.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: In the pre award phase, typically before you find a funding opportunity, you have an idea. Once you have this idea,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: you

Lydia Baxter-Howard: will start thinking about who might be a good collaborators to work with, on a potential project. Then you will go on to finding a funding opportunity

Lydia Baxter-Howard: for

Lydia Baxter-Howard: which you will then develop and submit a proposal, including a budget and all other relevant supporting documents. And then again, you will submit the proposal. One of the steps that’s not shown here is the review process between submitting a proposal and accepting the award. And that would be kind of right before this research management

Lydia Baxter-Howard: wheel in the middle of the screen and, and obviously this is done on the funders end. So that timeline varies depending on the funder. Once a once a sponsor has decided that your proposal kind of warrants funding, they’ll go into negotiation with the Support and Operations team I mentioned before, and they accept the award on behalf of WSU.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So this next, phase of the life cycle we have grouped into post award.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So the Post-

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Award and Research Management hub in the center

Lydia Baxter-Howard: here

Lydia Baxter-Howard: outlines what happens with and around your award as the project is ongoing.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So a fair

Lydia Baxter-Howard: amount of this work is done by Sponsored Program Services, which is within the Office of the Comptroller at WSU. So they’re not in OR at WSU,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The work will also be done by your individual college or schools, research and administrative support

Lydia Baxter-Howard: and various

Lydia Baxter-Howard: other essential partners for example, any aspects or certain aspects of ongoing training may be administered to the Office of Research or through HR. Regulations and compliance also involves

Lydia Baxter-Howard: also

Lydia Baxter-Howard: often involves multiple entities and may evolve over the project period. Once a project is underway Intellectual property and commercialization, like I said earlier, should be considered sooner rather than later. And I think you’ll hear me say that several times during this presentation. The team, the commercialization team really wants to hear about your innovative and novel ideas before you publish

Lydia Baxter-Howard: and the information is out there.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So

Lydia Baxter-Howard: These items are depicted outside the research management

Lydia Baxter-Howard: kind of

Lydia Baxter-Howard: hub.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: But, you definitely want to be thinking about them and consider reaching out to the commercialization team.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Before you get to the end of your award. So first, we’re going to focus on details of the pre-award phase of the grant lifecycle.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So the pre- Award phase starts with your idea. Again you develop collaborations and identify funding opportunities that might work for your idea and any potential team members that you have. Once you’ve identified that you move on to preparing a proposal package wi- including a budget, your research administrator will help with the budget. Which also has to be approved by.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Someone who’s approved to certify budgets.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Once that proposal package is prepared, the R.A. will review it, again, approve your budget, as I said. And, then you get to this stage of submitting your eREX. So the eREX ,which I’ll talk a little bit more about in a minute here, stands for electronic electronic, record of extramural funding. And, for those of you who’ve been at the university for a little while, that deadline is going to be changing.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So to ensure a more comprehensive review of your project before it is sent to the funder the eREX is now going to be required to be approved By. 9 a.m., five business days before the proposal deadline. Again, I will, give you a little bit more detail on that coming up here. So once you and your R.A. have submitted that eREX for approval, it is routed to support and operations where they review and approve it.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And then following this approval, there may be edits required by the PI. This kind of depends on, how, that this depends on the eREX completion.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The ORSO team or the support operations team is really, really great at, examining those eREXes and the proposal packages and making sure that they are compliant and complete. If there are any edits required, once those are done, the proposal submission is completed by support operations within the agency portal. And then beyond that, there is a review process by the agency and you find out whether you are either awarded or denied funding.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So as you begin your journey to finding funding for your research program, you’ll definitely want to start thinking about who might be

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Really great collaborators. And in deciding who you might work with as a collaborator, you want to think about your strengths and weaknesses. And form a team of people who really complement those strengths and weaknesses, as well as your work process. It’s not, I don’t think that it’s out of the realm of, Of developing a team to ask, you know, what

Lydia Baxter-Howard: what is your process with deadlines? Do you like to get things done a little bit sooner or do

Lydia Baxter-Howard: you work better under pressure? It’s an important thing to ask when you’re forming a team. As you’re looking for a suggestion, if you’re looking for suggestions and support up around contacting collaborators, you can reach out to the Advancement Partnerships team. We’re more than happy to help with that. Within the pivot database you can actually look up different researcher profiles.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So there’s a profiles tab on your Pivot homepage. And you can search for researchers by name, subject or affiliation. The advanced search under this tab also allows you to limit the search either to just WSU or, to, outside the the WSU, institution. Once you navigate to a researcher profile that’s only contact information and a mini CV for the researcher.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Additionally, the expertise tab in MyResearch will produce comprehensive search results

Lydia Baxter-Howard: of

Lydia Baxter-Howard: PIs who are in WSU grants that might match up to your search term or group. And you’ll also be able to pull up a list of relevant publications, including a title and abstract. After you’ve formed a team, if desired the next step is to select a funding opportunity to pursue. Again the pivot database is kind of our go to for finding funding opportunities, and they’ve recently rolled out the semantic semantic search function under Advanced Search.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: This is uses AI to match opportunities to your search instead of focusing on the keywords. So instead of of that you can type in a description of your research. And it’ll provide

Lydia Baxter-Howard: opportunities that may match the search.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: That may match your profile. One suggestion that I would have if you’re using this is to use, like an abstract from one of your papers. If you’re considering applying to a foundation opportunity, you will want to work with the WSU foundation relations team. And they’re linked here. And now I’m going to hand it over to Karen, for her take on commercialization in this process.

Karen Biggs: Thank you so much, Lydia. As she mentioned, my name is Karen Biggs. I’m a licensing associate in the Office of Commercialization here at WSU. Our role as licensing associates is essentially to act as a project manager when we have cases that are going to be able to turn into impacting the outside world that’s outside of standard publications or additional sources of funding.

Karen Biggs: If any of you are members of the Colleges of nursing, veterinary medicine or medicine, I am your licensing associate. Otherwise, I have wonderful colleagues who are here to work at these same roles that I am. Like Lydia mentioned, the foundational purpose of our office within the office of Research is to help translate the insights from the work that you do into impact in the outside world.

Karen Biggs: And we think about that in a much broader way than people have historically considered our office. So, that is it does include things like patents and copyrights. But it also includes the way that you produce impact through change in standard of practice in the world that you work in, through partnerships, through the development of curricula and websites that can help you get the work that you do into the hands of the people that can actually use it to improve the lives of people around us.

Karen Biggs: So, we work on innovation management. So if you think that you have something that could be a product or a program in the outside world, feel free to come contact us. You can use our website at commercialization at WSU or email commercialization at WSU. Once you’ve disclosed something to us, we can help you with additional sources of funding.

Karen Biggs: We have a Gap funding program that offers up to $50,000, to participate, to bring your work from where it is today and to a piece that is a little bit more, applicable to the outside world. We also have opportunities for entrepreneurial training and support. We are members of the iCorps Northwest Hub, so you can participate in the NSF iCorps program through our office.

Karen Biggs: We also just have additional sources of training for you in the world. We help with industry sponsored research and support, and just general navigation and WSU policies and procedures, which can be kind of complicated. One thing that I’ll mention in a little bit later as well, but I wanted to say here, is that, WSU really wants to help you innovate in any way possible.

Karen Biggs: And to that end, we have some of the most generous, faculty revenue distribution policies in higher education. Those are all part of executive policy 38 and included in the faculty manual. But they are on par with, if not more generous than most universities in the state, in the country. So, thank you.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: All right. Thanks, Karen. Excited to hear a little bit more later.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: All right. So we’re going to get back into the research life cycle, as you’re preparing your proposal. Again, like I said earlier, your RA, your research administrator really is your first point of contact. You want to follow all the deadlines they provide and always reach out if you can’t meet one of those deadlines, they will work with you.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The colleges will listed here have established extra proposal development support for their faculty. And some colleges do require an intake form for proposal development support. Check out these pages if you are in one of these colleges. If you’re not sure who your departmental RA or your research administrator, you can locate them in MyResearch and I will go through that really quickly here.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So from the MyResearch homepage, if you navigate to the grants tab and go down to Department contacts, it’ll pull up this screen, with different lists of department contacts. And you want to select that first one. Because you’ll be looking specifically for your RA, that list of eREX department contacts will pull up, a really comprehensive and up to date list of who you’re going to want to reach out to in your college.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And it is organized. You can sort in this, but I just do control+ F

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And search for the college. And usually there’s a couple people, within that college who you can reach out to. Since we’re in, MyResearch here, I also want to draw your attention to this compliance tab. And, we’ll come back to this a little bit later, but this is where you’ll be developing, uploading any IRB or IACUC protocols.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The Office of Research Assurances is now has an electronic IRB, which I believe is now submitted through their site. But your record will still be here. It’s recommended any time you use MyResesarch to use Google Chrome or Firefox

Lydia Baxter-Howard: and allowing pop ups from the site, and it will just help to, make your navigation within MyResearch a lot more smooth. The second screenshot is just what it would look like on a page with IACUC protocols.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Okay so as you start developing your proposal, I mentioned a little bit earlier that our team has put together this Research Development Toolbox Toolbox, and it’s a really great place to start if you’re looking for proposal development resources, especially if you’re looking at one of the agencies listed here. If you don’t see an agency listed, have questions about them, reach out to us via email or the Request Assistance button.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: One of the really great resources that you’ll find on this site is templates for any specific supplemental materials that are required for proposals for these separate agencies. We have developed those in-house, based on agency requirements, and we update them as the agency comes out with updates.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: a little bit more about your departmental RA. Again, potentially with assistance from an award development specialist such as my myself or Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello, we can provide guidance on funding opportunity requirements.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So your RA can provide support as you develop your budget and will approve and certify it prior to proposal, a proposal submission. Support Operations has a link on their website to the most current version of a budget Excel workbook. This is what your RA or you or both of you will use to develop your budget, and they will use it in this process.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Regarding indirect costs.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Your RA should be able to assist you in selecting the appropriate rate for your project. You may have heard a lot recently in the news about changes to indirect costs. We are proceeding as normal. We are still using our negotiated rate

Lydia Baxter-Howard: at this time, And your RA will be privy to that as well. So the indirect costs. Just a quick, overview. The other funds that cover all kind of all the other costs associated with

Lydia Baxter-Howard: running, to with conducting research, so stuff that’s not detailed in the budget. F&A or indirect costs reported by WSU can support cost sharing and may involve grad student support etc..

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And when the university receives, indirect costs, indirect cost dollars from an agency, they’re basically reimbursing themselves for costs that are already incurred at the university, including supporting research, research buildings, administrative support for research potentially like your RA.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Again, you may have heard this term F&A more than ever in the past six months

Lydia Baxter-Howard: agai-

Lydia Baxter-Howard: but nothing has changed in the process at this time. The F&A link on this page will take you to the OR guidelines site. OR has got, a huge library of guidelines that have really great information as you are

Lydia Baxter-Howard: developing and administering your your grant and I highly suggest that you look at those.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Sometimes your proposal will require that you include cost sharing and or matching funds. Only include those if they’re required by the agency. And ORSO or support and operations will repeat this as well. Voluntary cost sharing really does negatively impact WSU. And again, you can find more about this

Lydia Baxter-Howard: more info about this in the Business Policies and Procedures manual linked here, 40.33. So as we begin this process of initiating a proposal applica- application package in the sponsor portal, the support operations, link to frequently required information will be really helpful. So that will include UEI, APHIS code, accreditation information, and more. Typically, your final step in the proposal application process will be submitting this eREX or the electronic request for extramural funding.

“Lydia Baxter-Howard: I think I said record before. It’s electronic request for actual external funding.

This is used as a university record for all proposal applications and awards, and”

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Includes the requirements for us to maintain compliance with various granting agencies, and is a really important tool in tracking extramural funding.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: To submit

Lydia Baxter-Howard: an eREX you will need all of your proposal components completed and uploaded to the eREX and MyResearch. Once you and your RA have approved the eREX it goes through an approval process. It usually involves at least your department head, and sometimes also includes ADRs, as well as faculty and staff from the same level in any departments you may be collaborating with.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So support as I said before, support and operations is actually suggesting that this approval process be initiated 8 to 10 business days prior to the proposal deadline. Depending on how many approvals it needs to go through this can take a while, especially if, there are any potential corrections required arising from a rejection.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Giving yourself a little more time with the eREX will allow you to get it to support operations and approved by that 9 a.m. deadline, five business days prior to the proposal deadline.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So this is a calendar representation of what the erects deadline would look like for proposal to the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. I thought this was really helpful because it shows that even though I think we’re 11 calendar days prior to the proposal date or

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Even though we’re more than five calendar days before the proposal deadline deadline,

Lydia Baxter-Howard: it’s only five business days before the proposal deadline. There’s a little bit more, information on this, and there’s more information on this in the proposal submission quick reference guide in on the ORSO site and I highly recommend checking that out.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So the eREX form is housed within the MyResearch database. You or your RA can initiate an eREXas soon in the proposal development process as you like and you can find a link under grants eREX Forms, eREX Forms from the MyResearch dashboard. Once you navigate to that page you will select click a new eREX or create

Lydia Baxter-Howard: a new eREX And that generates the form. As you and your RA work on the proposal components. The eREX can be viewed under this not submitted tab at the top. This is what an eREX looks like before it’s filled out. There are ten tabs across the top, each with sections for you to complete and places to upload documents.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: If you’ve never completed an eREX before, it kind of can look like a lot, but your RA will be practiced in this process and will be able to assist or may complete portions of it themselves. In addition to the eREX deadline new this semester, the eREX is asking whether your research proposal fits under one of WSU’s research strengths. So on this checklist page within the eREX form

Lydia Baxter-Howard: down at the bottom here, you’ll check yes or no. This project is related to one of WSU’s core research strengths. And really helpfully, there’s a link to the research strengths right there. So if you have

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Any questions about it, you can find more information there. We’re also helpy, we’re also happy to help you look into this more if you have any further questions. If your research doesn’t fit into one of these identified strengths, don’t worry about it. OR is continuing to collect this information to help determine additional or emerging research strengths.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: It’s a very dynamic process. And, isn’t isn’t done to exclude anyone

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So if you do check, yes, that your research falls into one of the identified research strengths, you will also be required to select that strength in appendix three of the eREX.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Additionally, you may, also fall under one of the research substrengths, which you can find at that link on the previous page as well. As you draw closer to the proposal deadline like I said, you’ll submit submit the completed eREX for approval. There’s additional information and guidelines provided by Support and Operations linked here under Submit a Proposal and Guideline one.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: I’m going to say this a bunch more times so I apologize. But the eREX must be approved no later than 9 a.m. five business days prior to the proposal deadline. Work with your R.A. on this process. They will, they’re aware of this timeline, and, can help help you figure out when things need to get done

Lydia Baxter-Howard: so you meet that timeline. If your RA needs a little bit of extra support, our team at advancement in strategy in the Office of Research, one of the things we do in our proposal development is create timelines. So we can also help with that.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So the support operations team will review the eREX in MyResearch as well as the proposal package in the application portal. They may suggest edits.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: If you do have feedback from the support and operations team don’t panic. You have those five days to work with the RA to address the changes. And again, start early. I also want to draw your attention to the narrative hold policy that the Office of Research has. This allows faculty members submitting proposals to certain federal sponsor portals to

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Submit that eREX form, with all those final components completed except the

Lydia Baxter-Howard: research or technical narrative, such as the project description, research strategy, etc. the name depends on what sponsor you’re applying to and any directly associated documents such as references or a project summary.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Note that there should still be a draft of these sections uploaded in the eREX when it’s submitted. There’s also a place, so there’s a place on the eREX under the deadline tab to select whether the narrative hold will be used. And this policy is only applicable for proposals with eREX forms, again minus that narrative and associated documents

Lydia Baxter-Howard: the eREX has to be approved no later than five days prior to sponsor deadline. So if you have a rush submission that’s within those five days. This policy does not approve, but if you are able to take advantage of it, it enables you to continue work on the narrative and associated documents up until 9 a.m., the business day prior to the sponsor deadline.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: By this time, the final version of all these documents must be included at your eeREX and the sponsor portal.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So once you’ve submitted, you have to wait.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Depending on, the sponsor program, it can take six months or more for the review process to be completed with the current federal funding environment, these timelines may be more variable. But this is a great time to work on a different proposal application. When you do hear back from the sponsor, either support or operation, either support or operations will review negotiate the award before accepting it and sending it to SPS or you’ll have the opportunity usually to revise and resubmit.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Addressing reviewers comments is really essential to the resubmission process. And if you need any assistance with that, advancement and strategy has done that in the past and would be more than happy to, jump in. Alternatively, you may find a funding opportunity that’s better fit to your project and decide to apply for that instead.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So now we’re going to, move on to the post award phase of the grant life cycle. At this. point, the team that I’m on advancement and strategy’s role in the proposal development process is really complete. But various other OR teams are very heavily involved in this process.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So as I said, once the sponsor decides to make an award, support and operations goes through a negotiation process with the sponsor. Any necessary negotiated changes are made signed off by an authorized signatory and returned to the agency for the award to be executed. Following this execution, support and operations send the award over to SPS for account set up and management reporting. Often there are research administrator and administration support staff at the college or department level involved in management and reporting, as well.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: If you have subawards, you are going to work jointly with your RA as and support and operations to handle those. And if you have any compliance protocols, you should work with the assurances team in the Office of Research and again, Support Operations has a wealth of award related information on their sites, including these relevant forms and templates.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Make sure that each time you use one of these forms, as as you manage your award, you’re downloading the latest version from their site. They are updated regularly. You’ll also be required to complete mandatory trainings related to your award, usually through the collaborative institutional training initiatives within MyResearch, the CITI

Lydia Baxter-Howard: CITI Trainings, you hear about CITI training, that’s what that’s referring to. So these will, include the responsible conduct of research, training and conflict of interest training. And depending on your research, you may as well have biosafety, hazardous materials, radiation safety, etc. type training to to be completed.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: There’s also a certification process to assure that WSU is adhering to government policies. And you can read more about that about those policies in the BPM then faculty manual.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Just to give a brief overview on, significant financial interest or conflict of interest. It may apply to faculty member in the following scenarios. So if you’re engaging in intellectual property activities, anytime you’re engaging in sponsored agreements, subcontract or facility use agreements. Any grants that you receive from public health services and, or adopting sponsor grants, the institutional base salary and salary cap, guidelines apply.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: And so if you have like an NIH grant, I highly are applying for an NIH grant. Highly suggest. You check out the. The Bpmn, that’s linked here under institutional base salary and salary cap. Additionally, if you have any, equity interest overlap, any time there’s overlapping interest between your at WSU and work and service, you and another entity or engaged with any time there’s third party, party sponsored travel involved. Or if there are any family activities connected to the above.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: There could be a significant financial interest, conflict of interest involved. And, you can find out more, through support operations and or the commercialization teams. And they They will also have a lot of information on their site to be able to answer any questions.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Kind of related to this is the, is is conflict of commitment. I don’t see that we have specific training on conflict of commitment. And I apologize if I’m wrong.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: But this is outlined in Executive Policy 45, and the gist of it is that the university is the university employee’s primary obligation and commitment is the is to WSU. So any relating the related and overlapping requirements with other university ethics, including decisions made in the best interests of the WSU, outside activities, pursuits or occupations. You don’t want those to interfere with assigned WSU duties.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: University resources should only be used for WSU purposes. You should be maintaining university confidentiality.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: If there’s any public records requests made, those need to be addressed promptly and completely. And, you should be complying with all applicable WSU policies. And if you have another commitment that is in, conflict with these policies, that is potentially conflict of commitment. So if you have any questions regarding this, go ahead and reach out to support and operations.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Again, this this mandatory training, can be found under the training tab in the MyResearch database. Once your word is over excuse me.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: Or. Sorry. Not once. Your words over. Once your word has been made. SPS sets up the account Sponsored Program Services sets up the account.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: The team that does account set ups has really worked hard to overhaul their workflow, and the setups are going much more smoothly now. As you manage your award, you’re going to continue to work very closely with your RA and support operations. The PI dashboard in MyRsearch can provide you with audit and forecasting tools, and there are a lot of tools for award management

Lydia Baxter-Howard: that you’ll be required to use housed in Workday. Depending on the award, there may be some applicable reporting requirements. You’ll have to check with the you’ll have to look at this specific award, to determine these and if there are any changes that need to happen to an award in this post award phase, such as changing PI structure or just changing PIs

Lydia Baxter-Howard: It’s important to determine whether the sponsor or your individual department has any requirements surrounding approval of these award changes. All right, then I will hand it over to Karen again. For impact and innovation.

Karen Biggs: Hi again. Like we mentioned earlier, we in Office of Commercialization really feel like WSU research is wildly impactful as it is, and that our office exists as a continuation of that, in service of the land grant mission here at WSU. So we think that impact looks a lot of different ways, includes things like your publications that you’re already submitting, any sort of positive press that you receive, ways that you’re able to change policies in the world around you,

Karen Biggs: sources of additional funding. And then the more traditional aspects of our office, which is tech transfer, is just the production of the products, partnerships, and other things that help make us a better world. So, like I mentioned earlier, our office provides support for those efforts, including intellectual property management. You are not required to be an expert in intellectual property to work with us by any stretch of the imagination.

Karen Biggs: We have an IP team who’s responsible for helping walk you through that. And we’re able to engage outside counsel when, patents become, important on that level. We also help with things like marketing and licensing. So you’re not required to be an expert in the contracts that you’re looking at for that as well. And then finally, entrepreneurship training and support.

Karen Biggs: The thing I really want to drive home for you is that if if innovation in this way is something that you would like to have on your radar at some point in time, please come talk to us about ways that we can develop that now. Can think about translational research from all aspects of the grant pipeline, and then work with us and on invention disclosures when the time is right.

Karen Biggs: We don’t think that you need to be perfect this today. It’s a skill set. Much like every other skill set you’ve worked so hard at to be where you are today. Thank you so much.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: All right. Thanks so much, Karen.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So, as you wrap up work on an award, you’re going to enter the, the closeout process, which is a final step to the lifecycle of a grant.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: In this process, SPS will submit required reports as needed, and support and operations will submit again required performance reports if those are needed. If you’re not if you’re not awarded an extension of the project, the account will be closed. And if your project remains unfinished, you may be able to submit a time extension request to the sponsor.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: But, you’ll need to work with support and operations to do this. If you’ve been working with the commercialization team on any products that arose from this work, and that management process will likely continue well beyond the, end of the award.

Lydia Baxter-Howard: So that actually concludes, our talk, the Office of Research and Changes that we’ve kind of gone through in the last year, and the lifecycle of a grant.