General Discussions

Most of the time, at OU, our grants and contracts officers or research development officers start the Cayuse record for an upcoming grant proposal.  Our little mantra to the faculty is "you do the science; let us do this for you."  Obviously, this is cooperative, since we don't know about COI, etc.... without checking with the PI.  But I'm talking about the very beginning stages....we start the record as soon as we hear about an upcoming proposal.  For me, when I'm pulled into this role, creating the record serves as a good way to get to know the project.  What's happening?  With whom?  Where?  For how long?  It's an orienting practice.  But it also serves the important function of helping us keep track of what's coming in and what's going out.

Faculty, though, CAN start the record.  And they mistakenly assume that we are somehow "pinged" when a proposal is created.  My ongoing nightmare is that some faculty member starts a record, leaves it there, we don't see it or do see it but assume some other research administrator is on top of it - and it falls into grant proposal black hole.  I prevent this *fingers crossed* by hovering over the dashboard in the Proposal Created status, and when the number changes I make sure one of the grants and contracts officers has been in there working.

What do you do to prevent a missed proposal?  Is there a better way?

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Andrea Buford
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Oakland University
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Andrea,

Interestingly, we've just recently had a couple of people start their own proposal info in Cayuse.  That's usually not been an issue for us... we also always do that for the PI.  It's definitely something that we will also need to keep an eye on.

Fortunately the ones we've had lately have been more experienced PIs who know that they also need to submit a proposal information and PI certification form before we route the proposal, so that has helped.  But it could definitely be a concern for us if someone less knowledgeable does this!

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Pamela Vargas
Director, Research & Grant Development
Southeast Missouri State University
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-01-2021 10:01
From: Andrea Buford
Subject: started proposals - disaster prevention

Most of the time, at OU, our grants and contracts officers or research development officers start the Cayuse record for an upcoming grant proposal.  Our little mantra to the faculty is "you do the science; let us do this for you."  Obviously, this is cooperative, since we don't know about COI, etc.... without checking with the PI.  But I'm talking about the very beginning stages....we start the record as soon as we hear about an upcoming proposal.  For me, when I'm pulled into this role, creating the record serves as a good way to get to know the project.  What's happening?  With whom?  Where?  For how long?  It's an orienting practice.  But it also serves the important function of helping us keep track of what's coming in and what's going out.

Faculty, though, CAN start the record.  And they mistakenly assume that we are somehow "pinged" when a proposal is created.  My ongoing nightmare is that some faculty member starts a record, leaves it there, we don't see it or do see it but assume some other research administrator is on top of it - and it falls into grant proposal black hole.  I prevent this *fingers crossed* by hovering over the dashboard in the Proposal Created status, and when the number changes I make sure one of the grants and contracts officers has been in there working.

What do you do to prevent a missed proposal?  Is there a better way?

------------------------------
Andrea Buford
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Oakland University
------------------------------

This is a recurring nightmare of mine as well! Our process at BSU is such that the initiation of a proposal is a direct connection (phone or email) from the PI to our SPA central office, and then we create and manage the Cayuse record. Like Pamela, I've had a few faculty create records on their own, usually totally by accident. You can tell this by the status history on the proposal admin screen. We've had SP since 2015 and I've only ever had one faculty member purposefully create his own record (surprise!).

As SPA Data Watcher I keep an eye on this in the Unsubmitted Status 'bucket' when I do my monthly reporting. If it's a blank record and no PS has been assigned, I'll check the record, and delete it if appropriate. I don't know what your University load is like to know if that's a realistic process for you. For comparison BSU submits about 350 proposals a year, probably another 10-20 are withdrawn or unsubmitted after some amount of work is completed on them, and there are 5-6 SPA PS creating records.

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Augusta Isley
Senior Proposal Manager
Ball State University
amwray@bsu.edu
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-01-2021 10:01
From: Andrea Buford
Subject: started proposals - disaster prevention

Most of the time, at OU, our grants and contracts officers or research development officers start the Cayuse record for an upcoming grant proposal.  Our little mantra to the faculty is "you do the science; let us do this for you."  Obviously, this is cooperative, since we don't know about COI, etc.... without checking with the PI.  But I'm talking about the very beginning stages....we start the record as soon as we hear about an upcoming proposal.  For me, when I'm pulled into this role, creating the record serves as a good way to get to know the project.  What's happening?  With whom?  Where?  For how long?  It's an orienting practice.  But it also serves the important function of helping us keep track of what's coming in and what's going out.

Faculty, though, CAN start the record.  And they mistakenly assume that we are somehow "pinged" when a proposal is created.  My ongoing nightmare is that some faculty member starts a record, leaves it there, we don't see it or do see it but assume some other research administrator is on top of it - and it falls into grant proposal black hole.  I prevent this *fingers crossed* by hovering over the dashboard in the Proposal Created status, and when the number changes I make sure one of the grants and contracts officers has been in there working.

What do you do to prevent a missed proposal?  Is there a better way?

------------------------------
Andrea Buford
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Oakland University
------------------------------

At UA, we are a central office and we recently moved to a new process where the PI or their department must initiate and route the proposals before submission.  Our Specialists are assigned to specific departments/colleges.  We tell the PI's that they are still supposed to contact their Specialist to notify them of the impending submission. We ask that they add the specialist to the IPF as the Proposal Specialist to make it easy to sort the records but we also check by admin unit since we are assigned specific departments.  You can sort each status type by proposal specialist or admin unit so that works pretty well us since we have assigned departments.

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Jennifer Mills
Senior Grants and Contract Specialist/ERA Administrator
University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-01-2021 10:01
From: Andrea Buford
Subject: started proposals - disaster prevention

Most of the time, at OU, our grants and contracts officers or research development officers start the Cayuse record for an upcoming grant proposal.  Our little mantra to the faculty is "you do the science; let us do this for you."  Obviously, this is cooperative, since we don't know about COI, etc.... without checking with the PI.  But I'm talking about the very beginning stages....we start the record as soon as we hear about an upcoming proposal.  For me, when I'm pulled into this role, creating the record serves as a good way to get to know the project.  What's happening?  With whom?  Where?  For how long?  It's an orienting practice.  But it also serves the important function of helping us keep track of what's coming in and what's going out.

Faculty, though, CAN start the record.  And they mistakenly assume that we are somehow "pinged" when a proposal is created.  My ongoing nightmare is that some faculty member starts a record, leaves it there, we don't see it or do see it but assume some other research administrator is on top of it - and it falls into grant proposal black hole.  I prevent this *fingers crossed* by hovering over the dashboard in the Proposal Created status, and when the number changes I make sure one of the grants and contracts officers has been in there working.

What do you do to prevent a missed proposal?  Is there a better way?

------------------------------
Andrea Buford
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Oakland University
------------------------------

At ISU PIs are welcome, and encouraged, to start the Cayuse record. Our pre-award staff monitors the Project Dashboard daily.

We recently implemented Pivot-RP, which is a great tool for PIs to search for funding opportunities. My understanding is that, once we get converted over to the platform for our Cayuse modules, the two systems will have the ability to integrate. Then PIs will be able to find a funding opportunity in Pivot-RP and initiate a proposal from there.

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Eric Boerngen
Outreach Coordinator, Research and Graduate Studies
Illinois State University
edboern@ilstu.edu
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-01-2021 10:01
From: Andrea Buford
Subject: started proposals - disaster prevention

Most of the time, at OU, our grants and contracts officers or research development officers start the Cayuse record for an upcoming grant proposal.  Our little mantra to the faculty is "you do the science; let us do this for you."  Obviously, this is cooperative, since we don't know about COI, etc.... without checking with the PI.  But I'm talking about the very beginning stages....we start the record as soon as we hear about an upcoming proposal.  For me, when I'm pulled into this role, creating the record serves as a good way to get to know the project.  What's happening?  With whom?  Where?  For how long?  It's an orienting practice.  But it also serves the important function of helping us keep track of what's coming in and what's going out.

Faculty, though, CAN start the record.  And they mistakenly assume that we are somehow "pinged" when a proposal is created.  My ongoing nightmare is that some faculty member starts a record, leaves it there, we don't see it or do see it but assume some other research administrator is on top of it - and it falls into grant proposal black hole.  I prevent this *fingers crossed* by hovering over the dashboard in the Proposal Created status, and when the number changes I make sure one of the grants and contracts officers has been in there working.

What do you do to prevent a missed proposal?  Is there a better way?

------------------------------
Andrea Buford
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Oakland University
------------------------------