Sponsored Research Services (SRS) is responsible for submitting proposals requesting support for research and other scholarly projects to funding agencies. Resulting awards are made to UC and SRS administers them on behalf of faculty and staff. Faculty and staff members who direct sponsored programs under university auspices are responsible for effective conduct of these projects. Collaboration between faculty, staff and SRS is critical to the success of UC's research enterprise. Sandra Degen established the Research Grants Advisory Committee to address faculty concerns related to sponsored administration processes.

Over the past several months SRS and the Research Grants Advisory Committee have worked together to find solutions to faculty concerns. Based on the committee's recommendations, goals have been established to improve communication, decrease transaction processing time and standardize and simplify redundant and duplicative policies and procedures.

Actions thus far include:

• Development of a guide to help PIs and their support staff fulfill their responsibilities to obtain extramural funding: The guide is called Checklist for Proposal Development and Submission. You can find the new checklist on the SRS website http://srs.uc.edu/ under quick links which is on the right hand side of our home page.  
• Elimination of a second level review for proposal applications: Senior Grant Administrators (S.Cutter, D. Douglas, B. Kuertz, S. Manning and B. Slaughter) in the Grants Division now submit proposal applications without supervisory approval.  This new process results in more timely submission of proposal applications. SRS hopes to expand this flexibility to other Grant Administrators in the office soon. Look for further updates next month.  
• Development of a survey to provide feedback on SRS customer service:  Faculty members (PIs) who submit proposal applications receive an email with a link to the survey. Your feedback is important to us. Please take the time to let us know how we are doing.  
• Elimination of the standard late proposal email faculty members have received in the past. SRS continues to do its best to submit all proposals on time. 

On another note many of you have already heard, NIH and NSF will transition to the new Grants.gov Adobe proposal application software in December 08. The NIH timeline for this transition can be found at http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/files/electronic_submission_timeline_08.pdf . NSF has not announced its detailed timeline but watch the Researcher's Gateway for future announcements.