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A message from Alexa Van Dalsem and David Scarbeary-Simmons

Continued involvement with the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA)

As long-time members and volunteers with NCURA, we have expanded our roles this year.

David was elected to serve as the 2023 Chair-Elect for NCURA Region VII and continues to serve as a member of NCURA’s traveling faculty. Due to changes in the Region VII board leadership and the departure of the current chair-elect, he will serve his first term as chair starting in January and will name a chair-elect shortly after.

Alexa was selected as an NCURA traveling faculty member in 2023, serves on the NCURA Education Scholarship Fund Select Committee through the end of 2022, and continues her role as Region VII Volunteer Coordinator.

Both David and Alexa coordinate to provide learning opportunities for the RFS and OCG staff, including webinars for our staff and campus.

Please reach out to Alexa or David to learn more about how to get involved.

What an incredible year it has been! The Office of Contracts and Grants (OCG) and the Research Financial Services (RFS) staff have been working on several initiatives with significant campus input and support over the course of the past year. We are pleased to share updates on some of the amazing work that took place in FY22 and what’s up next for our collaborative efforts in the coming months.

We have made great strides working together on processes, initiatives, and holding joint meetings with campus stakeholders, cross-pollinating overlapping initiatives, and actively sharing information between our departments. We value open communication with the goal of our staff working effectively together and with the campus to support the campus research mission. This will continue to be a top priority for us. 

Through this teamwork and outstanding support from OCG, RFS, and campus staff, we have made progress in a number of areas, including:

  • Updated Foreign Currency Procedure Statement and Risk Acceptance Form: The procedural statement and form were updated in April 2022 to reflect current procedures and provide clarification on associated risk working with foreign currency in research.
  • Audit & Compliance: OCG and RFS have worked together on a number of audit areas, including internal and external audits and exchanging notes about audit questions. CCO’s new audit and compliance staff have been a huge support in these areas!   

Our two offices are committed to completing the following projects in the next year: 

  • No Cost Extensions (NCE): OCG and RFS have individual working groups looking closely at NCEs with the goal of improving the processes, sharing with each other, and updating communication with the campus when NCE requests are made so that the process is transparent, and status is clearly communicated. 
  • Project Setup: Starting with individual conversations with OCG and RFS staff involved in project setup and continuing to map the processes under the guidance of OCG’s Associate Director of Organizational Effectiveness, Nicole Jenkins, we are making progress towards improving the hand-off of awards between our two departments. 

While we continue to find ways to improve our processes and how we work together, we also love hearing from you as to how our teams can better support your work. Research administration is always made stronger by our networks and collaboration, and we will continue to press forward in supporting one of the top research institutions in the nation. Please reach out any time with comments, suggestions, or just to chat.