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External Grants and Grant Approval

Submission of External Grants and Approval of Grant Agreements

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (RSP) provides assistance in external grant proposal submission, grant administration, and ensuring compliance with all grant requirements - e.g., budgetary issues, human subjects protection (Contact Research Sponsored Programs at 438-2528).

The following is a brief summary of the steps to be followed in submitting a proposal for external funding: Complete the Proposal Submission Form and the applicable appendices. These documents can be obtained from the RSP (Research and Sponsored Program) Web site.

  1. Seek your department chair's input/reaction regarding all budgetary issues requiring departmental, college, or university contributions toward the project. Consult with one of the grant accountants at the RSP office regarding your proposed budget.
  2. Talk with me about your project before seeking approvals from your department chair and the dean.
  3. Submit the final version of the grant proposal packet and the accompanying budget to your department chair and college dean for their review and signatures. Submit a copy of the packet to me and forward the originals to the RSP for institutional signature and submission by the University to the funding organization. Once the funding source has made the decision to fund a project, a contract or agreement is used to formally make the award to the University.

In all cases, the RSP prepares/reviews, and negotiates all contracts for externally sponsored projects. All such agreements are legal contractual documents. If an award document requires the signature of a University official, the president has designated the associate vice president for research as the institutional official authorized to sign these documents. There are some variations to the above procedure.

For example, in some cases, college deans may sign some individually initiated externally sponsored agreements for amounts less than $2,500. This is done however, with the understanding that if these projects were to increase to a higher funding level, they would follow the same process described above.

Projects handled at the college level are not reported as part of the University's externally sponsored projects.  Finally, the RSP does report some awards/fellowships made directly to individuals (e.g., Fulbrights).  

RSP Proposal Submission Form is available on the Research and Sponsored Programs Web site.