Business Support Sponsored Programs Report

• Introduction
  • Motivation
  • Charge
• Approach
  • Guiding Principles
  • Definitions
  • Common Set of Responsibilities
  • Engagement
• Findings and Considerations
  • Common Set of Responsibilities and Current Perceptions
  • Responsibilities assigned to SPARC
  • Responsibilities assigned to Principal Investigators (PIs) or Project Directors (PDs)
  • Responsibilities assigned to Administrative Units
  • Role and Responsibility Perception Variance
• Outcomes & Recommendations
• Next Steps
• Appendix A
  • General Responsibilities (responsibilities that belong to everyone)
  • Incoming Award/Sub-Award Negotiation and Fund Establishment
  • Subawards (outgoing)
  • Award Reporting
  • Human Resources
  • Fund Management
  • Budget Management (5-FUNDS)
  • Budget Management (COST SHARE FUNDS)
  • Expenditures
  • Non-Financial Cost Share
  • Facilities & Administrative (F&A), or Indirect, Cost
  • Sponsor Billing
  • Award Close-out

1. Introduction

   1. Motivation

      In December 2018, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education reclassified the University of North Carolina Wilmington as a Doctoral University: High Research Activity (R2). In response to that recognition, the Chancellor convened a taskforce of institutional stakeholders to assess the campus impact of our R2 status on culture, identity, and current practices/processes. The Doctoral Transition Taskforce (DTTF) met during the summer and fall 2019 to develop recommendations related to their charge.

      To add additional context to these recommendations, the Embracing R2 5-point Implementation Plan was established in 2020 and a committee of faculty and administrators met during the 2020-2021 academic year to build upon the work of that DTTF. The subcommittee on Building Research Infrastructure (point 5) built a draft model to address business administration support for funded projects. The subcommittee further made the following recommendation:

      Charge a workgroup including staff members from college-level administration, the Center for Marine Science, departments/schools, SPARC, and AARM to develop a Business Administration Support Model (BASM) for funded projects leveraging the framework developed below. The intent is to create a model with well-defined roles and associated responsibilities with clearly established communication to ensure that we can best facilitate funded projects.

      Since this recommendation, the SPARC office has undergone an internal audit which resulted in 18 findings - many of which center on achieving clarity in roles and responsibilities. Moreover, the peer review conducted through the recently completed NORDP evaluation also supports the need to achieve clarity.

   2. Charge

      In a memo dated August 25, 2022, the Provost provided a charge to explore the business support infrastructure within Academic Affairs for sponsored projects. That charge specified the following activities:

      • Determine how each College and CMS currently support sponsored projects using a  common set of responsibilities.
      • Determine SPARCs responsibility for sponsored projects and determine if there is a common understanding of SPARCs role across administrative units of our division.
      • Determine what responsibilities are assigned to principal investigators and if these responsibilities are consistent across academic units.
      • Identify responsibilities where variance exists across the division and determine if that variance creates inconsistent, inefficient, or inequitable outcomes for project, project personnel, and support staff.

      This report presents results of this work. This effort generally focuses on the post-award activities related to administering a sponsored program at UNCW.

2. Approach

   1. Guiding Principles

      In determining how to align responsibilities associated with the administration of sponsored programs, the following guiding principles were applied.

      To the greatest extent possible, the alignment of responsibility out to:

      1. Foster a positive and collaborative research culture
      2. Leverage subject matter expertise
         1. Corollary: Reduce unnecessary administrative burden on researchers
      3. Integrate into existing organizational structures
      4. Leverage existing position types
      5. Facilitate consistent support
      6. Consider compliance & process control
      7. Maximize effectiveness & efficiency

   2. Definitions

      General terms and definitions for research administration and sponsored projects are collected in “Definitions for Research Administration” document for ease of reference, which is maintained by the Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance office. The following definitions are also critical to understanding the university business support for sponsored programs.

      Contract: Exchange of funds for the performance of a specific scope of work, usually written by the contracting agency. A contract is generally associated with procurement rather than financial assistance.

      Cooperative Agreement: Similar to a grant but with more substantial involvement between the grantor and grantee.

      Grant: An award of financial assistance to allow for the performance of certain work envisioned by the university or principal investigator.

      Sponsored Project: Exchange transaction, generally in the form of a grant, cooperative agreement, or contract with a defined scope of work, specified budget, specific deliverables, and typically subject to audit and compliance requirements. Usually initiated by funding agency or sponsor through a program announcement or other type of solicitation.

      SPARC: The Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance Office at UNCW that provides institutional sponsored program administration and support including assisting Principal Investigators with identifying funding sources, assisting with proposal development, overseeing the responsible management of sponsored projects, and ensuring university compliance with contract and grant fiscal and regulatory requirements related to sponsored programs.

      Administrative Department/Unit: An established organizational structure that has a financial organization where a fund can be administered and sufficient support infrastructure to facilitate and execute operational responsibilities exists.

      Principal Investigator (PI): An individual designated by the grantee and UNCW to direct a project or activity being supported by a sponsored project. A project Principal Investigator is responsible for leading the preparation, conduct, and administration of a research grant, cooperative agreement, training or public service project, contract, or other sponsored project. See UNCW Policy 09.007 Principal Investigator Responsibilities for Sponsored Projects for more detail.

      Project Director (PD): A title used by some sponsors that is a synonym for Principal Investigator.

      Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI): When multiple PIs share authority for leading and directing the project, intellectually, logistically, and financially, they are designated as Co- Principal Investigators (Co-PIs). Each Co-PI is responsible and accountable for the proper conduct of the project, including the submission of all required reports. The designation of multiple/co-PIs for a single project diminishes neither the responsibility nor the accountability on any individual PI. One of the multiple PIs must be designated as the Contact Principal Investigator. [Constant with NSF PAPPG17-1 Exhibit II-7]

   3. Common Set of Responsibilities

      An initial collection of responsibilities was constructed through exploration of other UNC system campus support materials and input of stakeholders through the process used to address this charge. This Common Set of Responsibilities was utilized to assess the current perceptions of college/CMS stakeholders regarding the assignment of roles to specific responsibilities and to identify variance among these stakeholders.

      This set of responsibilities primary focuses on post-award support activities; however, as part of the recommendations associated with this report, additional post-award and pre-award activities could be added to provide a more comprehensive view of activities necessary to administer sponsored projects.

   4. Engagement

      Using the Common Set of Responsibilities, stakeholders were asked to engage in a four-part input/feedback process.

      1. Initial identification of current perceptions. In this part of the effort, stakeholders were asked to identify their perceptions of how specific responsibilities are distributed across six units.
      2. Collective workshop. In this part of the effort, stakeholder perceptions were compared to perceptions of other stakeholders. The group engaged in a collective development process to revise the common set of responsibilities to provide clarity on specific tasks and structure tasks so that (typical) a single unit could be assigned to each responsibility.
      3. Revised identification of current perceptions. In this part of the effort, stakeholders were asked to update their perceptions of how specific responsibilities are distributed based on the revised set of common responsibilities. In this identification, stakeholders were tasked to only choose one of the following selections:
         
         

         Available Selection	Definition
         PI/PD	This is the individual (often a faculty member) who received the grant.
         Admin Unit	This selection should be used if the responsible role is a member of the College staff, Center staff, department/school staff, or similarly situated position.
         SPARC/Research	This selection should be used if the responsible role is a member of the SPARC office, central research office, or some other central unit (such as a unit inFinance).
         Varies	This selection should be used if the responsible role varies by project/program (i.e. for one project the Admin Unit staff might complete the task but in other projects SPARC/Research completes the task).
         Not defined/Unsure	This selection should be used if the responsible role has not been defined or ifyou are unsure.
         Everyone	This selection should be used if you believe the task/responsibility ought to be moved to the section for "responsibilities held by everyone".
         Multiple	This selection should be used if the task/responsibility is not refined enough to make one of the selections above and should be further refined/revised.

      4. Reconciliation. After compiling the revised perceptions, we found broad agreement on the roles assigned to most of the identified responsibilities. However, some variation remained. We thus reconvened the stakeholder group to resolve the differences. In many cases, this required again better defining a responsibility. At the conclusion of this work, there was broad agreement for the final assignment of roles to responsibilities that are presented in this report. The process reduced the perception variability amongst the stakeholders engaged.

      Stakeholders Included in this process included the College and Center Business Officers and Assistant Deans for Administration and Resource Management, as well as the SPARC Director, Pre-Award Manager, and Post Award Manager.

3. Findings and Considerations

   1. Common Set of Responsibilities and Current Perceptions

      Appendix A provides the final recommendations for the assignment of responsibilities to a responsible unit based on the outcome of the stakeholder engagements. As indicated earlier in the report, this set of responsibilities is focused on the post-award business administration processes within the division of Academic Affairs. We expect, however, that the clarification presented in this report to have a significant positive impact on operations and administration of sponsored programs. We further recommend continued review and clarification of additional roles and responsibilities related to administering sponsored programs. For example, at UNCW the Controller’s Office in Business Affairs is responsible for most sponsored program billing rather than SPARC and further clarifying this collaboration may be beneficial.

      1. Responsibilities assigned to SPARC

         Included in the recommendation column in Appendix A are those specific responsibilities assigned to SPARC based on this initial common set of responsibilities.

         In general, SPARC is responsible for ensuring the university remains in compliance with federal and state policies pertaining to research. The office accepts funds provided to the university and is accountable for the legal compliance with sponsor (federal, state, local and private sources) regulations and policies. SPARC is the contact point for federal and state audits, both fiscal and programmatic, on contracts and grants related to sponsored programs. Additionally, SPARC currently administers two internal grant programs (Cahill Awards and Momentum Funds), as well as the return of F&A to departments.

      2. Responsibilities assigned to Principal Investigators (PIs) or Project Directors (PDs)

         Included in the recommendation column in Appendix A are those specific responsibilities assigned to PIs based on this initial common set of responsibilities.

         In general, a project PI/PD is the intellectual lead and overall project manager for a sponsored program. They are responsible for leading the preparation, conduct, and administration of the sponsored program.

      3. Responsibilities assigned to Administrative Units

         Included in the recommendation column in Appendix A are those specific responsibilities assigned to the sponsored program administrative unit on this initial common set of responsibilities.

         Every sponsored program at UNCW has an identified administrative unit for the project or program. As considered by the assembled stakeholders, different administrative units at UNCW may vary in how they achieve the responsibility. In some instances, the needs may be met at the named department level, and in others it may be provided by an organizational parent unit (e.g., College or School).

   2. Role and Responsibility Perception Variance

      At the beginning of this process, there appeared to be large variance in the stakeholder perceptions of the roles and responsibilities related to administering sponsored programs at UNCW. We also discovered varied understanding of the many responsibilities.

      In reviewing initial perceptions across the various stakeholders and the initial recommendations, the following general areas were identified with higher variance:

      1. Responsibilities associated with Cost Share and Program Income Funds
      2. Responsibilities associated with verifying availability of budget prior to processing a transaction
      3. Responsibilities associated with fund reconciliation
      4. Responsibilities associated with providing spending reports to PIs and interacting with PIs on those reports
      5. Responsibilities associated with project close out duties and transaction close out duties.

      In the reconciliation process, the stakeholders were able to further reduce this variability in perceptions.

      In summary, the deliberative processes described in this report increased the common understanding of the roles and responsibilities amongst the stakeholder representatives, clarified many process steps, and reduced the overall variance in perceptions. Establishing a campus-wide collective understanding if the final recommendations will require differing levels of engagement with PIs, unit administrators, and SPARC personnel.

4. Outcomes & Recommendations

   This report summarizes what we characterize as both a discovery and developmental process. In this process, UNCW has already made progress toward process clarity in some responsibilities among the assembled stakeholders. In synthesizing the information collected through this process, the institutional has reached a level of maturity where the recommendation articulated by the Embracing R2 committee is no longer applicable. Instead, to create consistent, efficient, and equitable outcomes for projects, project personnel, and support staff, we make the following recommendations:

   1. Formally adopt the column labeled “Responsible Stakeholder(s)” on the Common Set of Responsibilities in Appendix A.
   2. Continue to build on the Common Set of Responsibilities by adding pre-award responsibilities and additional post-award responsibilities.
   3. Provide administrative units the flexibility to provide enhanced support to PIs/PDs for those responsibilities assigned to the PI.
      1. In Academic Affairs, charge each college/functional area/CMS with clarifying department vs. college/functional area/CMS level support and to codify (and have approved) enhanced PI/PD support models.
   4. Charge the Associate Provost for Research and Innovation and Associate Provost for Administration and Resource Management to collaborate with AA business professionals and SPARC to implement assigned responsibilities.
   5. Engage with business professionals from other divisions to ensure that responsibility assignment is operationalized through any unit that may administer a grant for consistent project outcomes across campus. This includes mechanisms for employee training to ensure that all employees engaged can be efficient and effective with these duties.

5. Next Steps

   In considering the recommendations listed above, the following groups ought to be consulted and have some buy-in into the assignment of responsibilities: (1) Deans Council, (2) Provost’s Cabinet, (3) Faculty Senate Research Committee, (4) Research and Innovation Council, and (5) AA Business Leaders/SPARC.
   
   In order to facilitate these discussions, the APRI and APARM will confer with the Provost to schedule engagement opportunities over the summer 2023 semester with the goal of operationalizing these recommendations during the academic year 2023–2024.

Appendix A: Recommendations for Responsible Stakeholder(s) for post-award tasks

General Responsibilities (responsibilities that belong to everyone)

Incoming Award/Sub-Award Negotiation and Fund Establishment

Subawards (outgoing)

Award Reporting

Human Resources

Fund Management

Budget Management (5-FUNDS)

Budget Management (COST SHARE FUNDS)

Expenditures

Non-Financial Cost Share

Facilities & Administrative (F&A), or Indirect, Cost

Sponsor Billing

Award Close-out