As a leading research institution, the Ohio State University encourages and facilitates the investigation of countless ideas and lines of inquiry as part of the university’s core goal to encourage research and innovation. Research is also a central part of the College of Pharmacy’s mission, vision and values, and occupies a key position in our strategic planning efforts. Research and innovation are central to the work that we do in the college each day.
As you can imagine, undertaking ground-breaking research involves not only our very talented faculty, research staff, and trainees, but also a great deal of support from our staff and administrative areas. In this week’s blog, I would like to take a few moments to introduce you to one of the administrative areas in the college that helps to support our research agenda: our central business office.
I’ve asked Joy Scott, our Business Service Center manager and certified research administrator, to share a few words about the work that she and her colleague, business manager Tesia Forbes, do to support principal investigators and our research mission:
One of our main tasks as business managers for our college is to facilitate the research that is taking place. We manage more than $20 million in research grant awards, and we are continually striving to promote the highest quality research and research administration. As part of the Central Business Office team, Tesia and I provide a centralized resource for grant submissions and administration within the college. We work in close collaboration with the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), and provide both pre- and post-award grant administration support.
Pre-award, we help principal investigators by identifying and publicizing funding opportunities. We review funding opportunity announcements and sponsor guidelines to identify specific sponsor requirements. We schedule and attend research proposal team meetings as needed, and assist with developing project budgets and seeking budget justifications. We complete authorizations to seek off-campus funding and coordinate questions about award and expenditure credit, indirect cost rates and cost sharing.
We identify and help obtain supporting documents for research proposals, including bio-sketches, letters of support, and sub-award documents. We assist with formatting proposals (abstracts, images, tables and appendices), to ensure compliance with sponsor requirements. Additionally, we serve as liaisons between OSP’s sponsored program officer and our faculty in award negotiations, revising budgets and responding to funding cuts that are sometimes requested by the sponsor. We can also request preliminary project numbers (accounts) for investigators when needed.
After researchers receive grant awards, we continue to support their efforts by assisting with administrative details such as completing signature authorization forms and ensuring appropriate faculty and staff appointments to a project. We work with faculty, research staff and division coordinators to procure supplies and materials, and complete personnel expenditure transfers to ensure that faculty and staff effort are properly charged to projects. We advise researchers on allowable costs and budget latitude, help faculty complete progress and final reports, and serve as liaisons between researchers and OSP on budget revisions, requests for project period extensions and project close-outs. We monitor project financials, and arrange for consultant and sub-award agreements. We also facilitate compliance activities like effort certification.
These are just some of the services that we provide to support researchers in the College of Pharmacy. We welcome questions about any of the research administration services that we provide in the Central Business Office. Please contact us by calling (614) 247-4697 or emailing scott.325@osu.edu or forbes.120@osu.edu.
Thank you Joy and Tesia, for the expertise you share with our faculty on a daily basis. We sincerely appreciate your support for research and innovation in the College of Pharmacy.
Best regards,
Katherine Kelley