iSRA Virtual Conference - Wednesday Sessions

This session will provide participants an overview of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA), types of NRSA awards and the importance of requesting total tuition and fees versus requesting an amount arrived at by applying the NIH formula or requesting the NIH cap amount.

Content level: Basic 

Learning objectives:

1. Identify NRSA types of support and the difference between them. 
2. Provide documentation and guidance to staff and potential recipients of NRSA awards. 

Speaker(s): Debbie Pettitt, Senior Grants Management Officer, National Institutes of Health

Do you know what it takes to survive an internal audit? What questions am I able to answer and whom may be better at answering them? What documents must I keep and how long before I can destroy them. What are internal auditors looking for anyway?

Content level: Basic

Learning objectives:

1. Think of establishing procedures in order for an internal audit to be conducted smoothly.
2. What are internal auditors looking for and what can I learn from an audit?

Speaker(s): Jason Claes, MBA, MSM, GRCRA, Assistant Director Research Accounting, University of Cincinnati

Kris West, COGR Director of Research Ethics & Compliance, and David Kennedy, COGR Director of Costing and Financial Compliance, will provide an update on COVID-19 developments and the impact on Research Administration. Their update will include a summary of resources COGR has made available to the research community. They also will touch on “old business” (i.e., those other topics that were the hot topics prior to COVID-19).

Content level: Basic

Learning objectives

1. Provide the community with the most current status of COVID-19 developments, and as appropriate, the status on "old business" developments. 
2. Summarize resources available to the research community. 

Speaker(s): Kristin West, Director of Research Ethics and Compliance, COGR; David  Kennedy, Director of Costing and Financial Compliance, COGR 

It is scientifically and ethically imperative for researchers to understand it is a key commitment to our research participants to report the results of the clinical trials, so that we can advance knowledge and make informed medical decisions about health care. This session will discuss the most recent federal mandates and pertinent requirements of clinical trials disclosure and good practice. The presenters will share the proactive approach that Rutgers’ Human Subjects Protection Program (HSPP) has taken to establish an effective system for clinical trials registration and results reporting at their institution. Not only investigators have been facilitated thru ongoing training/ support, key issues have been identified and tackled, but also culture of compliance has been cultivated collectively in this process.  

Content level: Intermediate

Learning objectives:

1. Describe why clinical trials disclosure matters; list resources to assist investigators in maintaining compliance. 
2. Identify key elements to establish a system in your organization to facilitate and monitor clinical trials registration and results reporting. 

Speaker(s): Niem-Tzu Rebecca Chen, MS, Med, CCRP, Human Subjects Protection Senior Analyst, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Cheryl Forst, RN,BSN,CCRP, Director Human Subjects, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 

Do you have a program in place that prepares your new faculty and research staff on the functions of departments under the VP for Research? This session will focus on onboarding new faculty and research staff specifically on managing their accounts from reading the account statement, preparing requisitions, and navigating through BANNER.

Content level: Basic 

Learning objectives:

1. Develop a program that will assist new faculty and research staff. 
2. Understand the complexity of our world through the eyes of the new PI. 

Speaker(s): Gloria Greene, MA, CRA, Director, Office of Sponsored Programs, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Teresa Schurtz, CPA, Research Budget Director, Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Why do grants administrators/managers (pre- and post-award) need to understand compliance policies and procedures?

Why do compliance officers, IRB, IACUC, IBC, COI administrators need to understand grant submission and award acceptance policies and procedures?

Often, research compliance staff, protocol review committees, sponsored program offices, and finance departments work in silos and none may truly appreciate the processes, deadlines, and responsibilities of the other. To ensure timely communication with sponsors, compliant grant applications and progress reports, and audit-ready grants management records, it is best when all sides are in sync and can verify and ensure grant congruency.

In this session, we will discuss these issues and strategize best practices that can be tailored considering the needs and available resources of the Institution.

Content level: Intermediate

Learning objectives:

1. Explore best practices for maintaining quality assurance in grants management with regard to research subjects protections and compliance information. 
2. Share strategies for communicating more effectively with colleagues to achieve grant congruency and accurate records for all appropriate offices. 

Speaker(s): Debra Schaller-Demers, MSOM, Senior Director, Research Outreach and Compliance, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer 

Who's responsibility really is it to collect funds that have been invoiced. Do you know that unpaid invoices for a research institution is close to 20%? Why should I care if my institution has an invoice for an unpaid invoice to a sponsor and does it impact my researcher directly? Collections is one of the hardest jobs, but some tips can make communicating more effective in getting paid for the work your research team has conducted.

Content level: Basic

Learning objectives:

1. Review Tips and Tricks to getting an invoice paid. 
2. Participants will leave with a better understanding why unpaid invoices should worry you.

Speaker(s): Jason Claes, MBA, MSM, GRCRA, Assistant Director Research Accounting, University of Cincinnati

When it comes to managing a project with the compliance team, pre and post award teams we often get a different communication language. Do you feel as though you’ve entered another planet each time you start the discussion or when resolving an issue? Well you’re not alone. This session will explore the communication issues surrounding research administration. We will outline strategies to aid in conversations, meetings and communications with your constituents. This session will discuss building communication strategies and networks that will improve service.

Content level: Intermediate 

Learning objectives:

1. Identify communication gaps. 
2. Build communication strategies

Speaker(s): Karen Mitchell, MBA, Assistant Vice President, Temple University; G. Angie Calicat, Grants and Contracts Specialist, Temple University

The research environment is always on the move – scientists study the nature and behavior of things and research administrators provide the underlying internal controls to help facilitate compliance with federal regulations.  Keeping up with changes in regulations and providing adequate training to campus constituents can be challenging.  Maintaining a tool set of resources that are available to assist administrators with post approval monitoring activities that detect potential areas of risk is an essential part of building those internal controls.  This session will look at risk assessment tools and discuss various methods of mitigation associated with research integrity and ethics.

Content level: Intermediate

Learning objectives:

1. Understand how to best keep up with changes in regulations. 
2. Review risk assessment tools. 

Speaker(s): Denise Clark, Associate Vice President, University of Maryland; Beth Brittan-Powell, Director Joint Research Collaborations, University of Maryland; Phil DeShong, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland 

The emergence of new and more intense conflicts of interest and commitment are a direct consequence of the entrepreneur university or hospital – much effort is given towards promoting entrepreneurship, but relatively little its management or integration with research integrity. Offices of research administration and/or compliance are left with the responsibility of identifying and managing them. In this session, we will identify and discuss strategies for fulfilling these responsibilities.

Content level: Intermediate 

Learning objectives:

1. Review integration of research integrity. 
2. Identify methods to fulfill roles and responsibilities related to managing research integrity. 

Speaker(s): John Baumann, Associate Vice President for Research Compliance, Indiana University 

No this is not a session for retired persons – AaRPP will explore how research administrators can help give guidance when authorship issues arise and when researchers run into difficulty dealing with journal issues; such as avoiding plagiarism mistakes and duplicative publication, refusing ghostwriting and speaker bureau assignments, declaring FCOI in publications, citing proper funding, and knowing when and how to publish in Open Access (including NIH PubMedCentral requirements).

Content level: Advanced 

Learning objectives:

1. Review and identify authorship issues.
2. Address methods to give appropriate guidance when authorship issues occur. 

Speaker(s): Debra Schaller-Demers, MSOM, Senior Director, Research Outreach and Compliance, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer 

Whether one is new to research administration or seasoned veteran, the experience of working in this field can be daunting and at times overwhelming. This is true for departmental administrators and those in centralized research offices; while the details vary, the stress, the volume of work, and the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge required can all quickly take a toll and leave you wondering why in the world you ever chose a job like this. But it doesn’t have to be that way. While many of the most frustrating and painful aspects of working in research administration are not going away any time soon, we can at least look at how we deal with them and come up with ways to reduce the pain. In this session we will discuss some of the things that make working in this field so challenging, such as difficult faculty, last-minute proposal submissions, bridging the gap between departments and central offices, and more. And in going through these issues we will talk about small changes and new approaches that can significantly improve the overall experience of being a research administrator.

Content level: Basic 

Learning objectives:

1. Identify at the proposal development stage budgetary issues that could cause problems on the post-award side.
2. Understand how to address issues like over-commitments and cost sharing that manage to slip through to the award stage and develop strategies to minimize such occurrences.

Speaker(s): Jeffrey Petsis, Director, Sponsored Programs Administration, University of Pittsburgh

From the first day we entered the field of research administration, we’ve had the importance of facilities and administrative costs (aka F&A or indirect costs) drilled into us. We’ve heard words and phrases such as F&A rates, facilities and administrative costs, cognitive agencies, cost pools, cost share undermines the F&A rate, MTDC, recovered F&A … We know that facilities and administrative costs are an integral part of an institution’s funding profile and that these funds are needed to support the research infrastructure of our institution. We’ve undoubtedly been told that F&A represents costs that cannot be directly attributed to a specific project, but are incurred by the institution in the support of research. However, how much detail do we know about the negotiation of our institution’s F&A rate? In this session, we will dive into the details of the all-important F&A rate. We will explore how to balance sponsor requirements and institutional costs.

Content level: Basic

Learning objectives:

1. Identify the cognizant agencies, to describe the formula for the F&A rate development, to detail the pools for the categories of facilities costs and administrative costs, and to list the types of F&A rates.
2. Evaluate the impact to institution’s F&A rate and, thus, the support of the research enterprise by factors such as the cost accounting standards and other regulatory agencies, waivers, unrecovered F&A, and cost sharing.

Speaker(s): Kimberly Read, PhD, CRA, Assistant Director, FCIC, University of South Florida