New Faculty Information Series #4: Office of Research Centers and the eREX Revisited

All right. I’m going to go ahead and get started today. Thank you all for coming and joining us. This is, a New Faculty Information Series. This session is going to be on the Office of Research centers, and we’re going to do a revisit of the eREX. My name is Lydia Baxter-Howard. I’ve been with the Office of Research Advancement and Partnerships, or ORAP, since May
Okay, so without further ado, I’m going to go into some details on the eREX form. So eREX is an acronym that stands for Electronic Request for Approval of Application for Extramural Support. This is an internal application that the Office of Research uses to track proposals and awards made to the University.
So the general process that faculty will go through as they’re submitting an eREX or as their RA is submitting and eREX, is outlined on the screen here. I just want to note that I’m going to say this a million times, but the first thing that you want to do is talk to your RA or your research admin.
This might be a business services admin, someone in that type of field, a grants specialist. A lot of people’s individual departments have someone who is dedicated to this work for their department. I can also help anyone who wants to find that information out. If you’re not sure a research admin is, reach out to our office later, after the session or at the end, and I can show you how to access that information.
So, the first step in an eREX is that it is after it’s filled out and completed, it’s submitted and goes through an approval process with ORSO. So the proposal is entered into MyResearch and ORSO assigns the eREX a number. And so that’s an internal tracking number for your proposal for the Office of Research to use. Again, this is really important for internal tracking of sponsored activity.
It’s where we go to look at all of history for NSF awards. It’s kind of the first stop that we will go to in the Office of Research for that sort of information. We can see who is getting funded, who is renewing their awards. It’s really helpful for a lot of different data analytics. And then the dissemination and communication kind of goes along with those data analytics.
And a lot of the information that goes into an eREX is actually, necessary for federal compliance and reporting. So that’s the third…. So the fourth piece of, what you’re, achieving by submitting an eREX. So like I said, your research administrator is going to be your go-to person for your eREX. If you don’t know… again, if you don’t know who your RA is, reach out to your department.
Or us at orap and we can help you find out who that person is. They are the person who will approve and submit the eREX form to the Office of Research Support and Operations, or ORSO. So technically faculty do not submit their own eREX forms. In addition to the submission process of an eREX form before it goes through the whole approval process with ORSO, there are different departmental approvals that have to… that the eREX has to go through before the final approval from ORSO.
So you’re again, your RA should always be your first point of contact. As I said, there is a great list of departmental RAs listed in MyResearch. There’s a drop down menu for department contacts, and you can search for your department there
Later, I can show you where you can find that if anybody wants that information. Again, like I said… kind of alluded to at the beginning, many colleges and campuses provide extra support. So these ones that are listed up here, this will take you to the support for your individual college, if you see it listed up there. And additionally, any time you are planning to submit a proposal, reach out to your RA right away.
It’s really helpful for them as they plan their their schedule. So you’re not bogging them down at the very last minute in case they have a lot of, proposals that they’re working on and eREXs that they’re working on. So after you contact your RA, the eREX is a requirement for sponsored submissions. So this exception here may be like a pre-proposal submission.
Anytime you do a full proposal submission, you are required to have an eREX. You can refer to this Guideline 30 which is linked on this page to determine, whether or not an eREX is required.
One of the things that is going to go into the eREX is a PDF copy of your proposal. So whether you’re applying through FastLane or NIH ASSIST, Research.gov for NSF or any of the different platforms, Grants.gov, you can generate a proposal draft once all of your documents are uploaded into that platform. And this is what is attached to the eREX.
Once that is attached, and you’ve worked with your research admin to fill out that eREX…a lot of times, your research admin will know what information goes into the eREX, there’s a lot of things that auto populate in there. And it… The RA can give you a lot of support as you’re filling out the eREX.
Once it’s filled out, it’s routed through the Office of Research Support and Operations, ORSO, by your RA. So again, they have to do that final submission. ORSO will then obtain required eREX approvals. So usually once your RA has approved and submitted it, there are additional departmental approvals and financial approvals. Your department chair, that sort of thing.
And then finally, once all those approvals have been made ORSO will review the proposal package. You’re also going to link your proposal package in whatever platform you’ve used. ASSIST, FastLane…. Sorry, I keep using FastLane: Research.gov. Grants.gov. That’ll be linked in the eREX. And so the ORSO representative who is reviewing your proposal will use that link link to double-check that you have all of the required information in your application package.
So as you are working on eREX, and working on a proposal specifically, you need to be mindful of this eREX deadline. So you may have different deadlines, depending on your department, your RA can give you information on this, but ORSO itself has a deadline of two days prior to the funder submission deadline that the eREX has to be submitted.
So if you are applying to NSF and their deadline is 5 p.m. local time on Friday the 23rd, your deadline for submitting this eREX and really getting your entire proposal submitted to WSU internally is going to be Wednesday the 21st at 5 p.m. And again, it’s two business days prior to the sponsor deadline. As you can see up here, depending on the department, it can be up to two weeks before the sponsor deadline for your department eREX deadline.
More information about these policies and procedures, again, can be found, in the ORSO guidelines, as well as in the Business Policies and Procedures Manual that WSU has.
One really nice thing that ORSO offers is this narrative hold policy. So basically what this means is if everything in your proposal has been completed, the budget’s completed, all the supplementary documentation is completed. The eREX has been approved. You have to have an eREX approved, to qualify for this policy. You can submit the eREX with a narrative hold.
And when I say you need to have the eREX approved, it has to be past that. It has to be submitted before that two day deadline to qualify for this narrative hold. So only proposals and additionally only proposals requiring submission by an institutional authorized representative or an AOR. The online federal portals are, qualified for this policy.
More detailed information on the narrative hold can be viewed at this link. That’s, that is at the narrative hold, text at the top of your screen. So again, this only, the narrative hold only applies to the research and technical narrative and directing related documents. So, so that’s maybe a research strategy, your narrative for NSF and the bibliography and citations, usually also the abstract and summary and anything, to that, to that nature, can be submitted in draft format when you submit an eREX with a narrative hold.
Once, if you do decide to use this policy, once you have, finished your narrative and uploaded it into the proposal platform. Excuse me. You need to or you need to notify ORSO yourself to let them know that this is completed so they know that they can do the final checking. And, and then finally submit your proposal.
When you are doing this narrative hold, the deadline for the narrative hold is five hours prior to submission deadline. So we’ve talked about a couple different deadlines here. If you are not doing the narrative hold policy, the eREX is due two business days before the submission deadline or the funder deadline. If you’re doing a narrative hold, the eREX is due more than two days ahead of time, ahead of the funder deadline and that narrative section and associated documents.
So bibliography, abstract, etc., those documents have to be uploaded into the submission platform five hours prior to submission deadline. And again, this is because a representative from ORSO will be going in and checking that proposal, before they finally hit the submit button.
So to find the eREX form, many of you probably are are familiar with MyResearch at this point. You’re going to go under the Grants tab; it’s the second option on the Grants tab. You’re going to just going to go to eREX forms. This is what an eREX looks like before anything has been filled out. Just to, give you a few updates, the Deadline tab, has been changed to include a narrative hold option and your proposal ID where it’s appropriate.
So if you are planning to submit the eREX with the narrative hold, there’s a checkbox. And then there’s also a space for your application number, whatever is assigned to your application. Via the funder platform. Contacts and Approvals tabs need to have PI affiliates designated. So that… let’s see, on to the sixth tab over right after Approvals.
That one in the Contacts tab, need to be need to have PI affiliates designated. A reminder for this: the PI, co-PIs, dean, chair, and department must be listed. And the affiliates again need to be designated for these… of these positions. This should be something that your RA can help you with. If all of this sounds really strange to you, I guarantee it’s not strange to your RA.
They should be super familiar with this form and can answer a lot of questions. That you may have that are more specific to your department. When an eREX is generated, an email from the PI providing delegate permissions for someone else to approve for them on this exact proposal is required and it needs to be attached to the eREX documentation.
So for whatever reason, if the PI is unable to do the approvals necessary, for their proposal, a specific process has to be followed to assign delegates. And once that is submitted, if there are any additional approvals that are needed, this can be done on a mobile device, which is really nice. Okay. So switching gears, that’s kind of the end of the eREX spiel.
We’re going to talk about the Office of Research Core research facilities and their centers and institutes. So I’m actually going to change my screen. Can you guys see the Office of Research? Page now? Yep. Perfect. Thanks, Emily.
So the Office of Research, has a very up to date list of all the core research facilities and centers and institutes that are available for use for WSU faculty, graduate students, anyone in the research community. So the core research facility list is generally, is a list of general facilities that have specialized instrumentation that may be cost prohibitive for a specific lab to purchase.
So, for instance, we have, a stable isotope core facility which allows researchers to address questions, by measuring isotopes. So they do isotope analysis. We also have an NMR laboratory. Basically, what these different core labs do is provide a space for researchers to conduct analyzes and use instrumentation that they may not otherwise have available.
All of this information is on the Office of Research website under this Capabilities tab. So we’re under Core Research Facilities right now. The other area that we’re going to look at is centers and institutes. So again the centers and institutes are are programs that are usually supported or at least started with funding from federal agencies.
But they are programs that have specific focuses, and sometimes they offer funding. Sometimes they offer, proposal support. But a whole list of the centers and institutes that are available to WSU faculty is, is here at the Office of Research site. So whether you’re, you’re going to be doing cannabis research or maybe you’re going to be doing small business development research, there’s a lot of different resources available through these centers, for faculty and staff.
And I think that is all… I know that we’ve gone pretty quick. I’m going to jump back to the PowerPoint point really quickly.
And again, all of these, all of the core facilities and research centers and institutes are linked in the PowerPoint, which you guys will receive. So the remainder of the PowerPoint mostly looks like this. But it’ll take you to that, those specific institutes or core facilities website. And a lot of times, if it’s an instrumentation, there’s sign ups that are available on their website.
There’s more details about how the center or institute or core facility can, provide assistance for your research needs, and so forth.