Grants & Contracts

Grants and Contracts has purchased software from FormRouter.Net to enable AMC faculty and administrative staff to more easily "route" grant applications and contract proposals for approval. Simply put, electronic routing is one of many steps Grants and Contracts is taking to improve process flow when working with administrative units at AMC.

Responsibility

In order to participate, all parties involved including the PI and the administrative unit (defined as part of a school, department, division, center, institution section, or large program and including the department or division administrator) must:

• Demonstrate willingness to be involved
• Agree to strictly uphold stated parameters including roles and responsibilities
• Acknowledge the following:
  1. All applicable Federal, State, and local government, University, and sponsor instructions, requirements, policies, and procedures are followed.
  2. Approving officials that are recipients of electronic proposal routing forms (e.g. Chair, Dean, etc.) agree to review electronically submitted information. Approving officials agree to notify by phone or email the PI/Primary Contact listed on the routing form if the routing will not be approved.
  3. If at any point the approving official does not approve the routing, the PI will need to re-submit the routing once the concerns of the approving official have been resolved (i.e. information revised).
  4. Upon approval in Grants and Contracts, an authorized institutional official will affix original signature(s) to hardcopy documents of the electronic proposal. In some instances, the PI/Primary Contact may need to coordinate the signature process with Grants and Contracts for example, when the PI must sign a document before the institutional signatory. In these cases Grants and Contracts anticipates the need for utilization of the Campus Shuttle or the physical drop-off of such documents by the PI/Primary Contact. Hardcopy original documents will be returned to the PI’s Primary Contact who is responsible for proposal transmission to the sponsoring agency.
  5. The PI/Primary Contact will communicate to Grants and Contracts any special instructions or requests concerning what documents need signatures and must be returned in hard-copy format.

Risk

The time to electronically review and approve the electronic documents submitted by each review/approval level is dependent upon timely review of incoming documents and subsequent electronic forwarding to the next review approval level. To minimize time that an electronic proposal is awaiting review/approval each processing level will need to have in place a procedure to ensure timely review/approval of electronically submitted proposals. Each approving official must have alternative personnel designated and set-up to fulfill the review/approval function in the event the approving official is unavailable. Grants and Contracts will not take responsibility for delays in the routing process that are out of the control or responsibility of Grants and Contracts.

Interested Participants

Before a School/Department/Institute/Center can make use of electronic routing, the individuals who provide Dean/Chair/Director level approvals (or the area adminstrator) on the Grants and Contracts Routing Form need to attend a kick-off meeting with Jennifer Silverthorne in OGC. If you are not a Dean/Chair/Director level approver, please relay this information to the appropriate Dean/Chair/Director level approver in your area.

Kick-Off Meeting for Dean/Chair/Director Level Approvers or area Administrator:

• The purpose of the kick-off meeting is to familiarize you with the new process and set-up requirements.
• It is HIGHLY recommended that your LAN Administrator/technical support person attend this meeting.

The following system requirements for Dean/Chair/Director level approvals, including delegates, are necessary for electronic proposal routing (more information can be found at http://www.uchsc.edu/ogc/pre/epr/EPR_inst_PilotI.pdf).

1. Generic Email set-up to handle the volume of emails with attachments
2. Adobe Reader 6.0 (available for FREE)
3. Software application to “ZIP” documents, such as JustZipIt software (available FREE)
4. Use of a newer version of Windows, not Windows 95 or 97
5. Creation of Tran DSN
6. Connection to the HSC network
7. Set-up of Access database named “OGC_PRF_ATTACHMENTS” (available from Grants and Contracts) that connects to the HSC network and utilize the Tran DSN created above.

Once the Dean/Chair/Director level approvers or area Administrator have attended the kick-off meeting and completed the set-up requirements, administrators and faculty can begin taking advantage of the process.

Schools and departments interested in participating in a kick-off meeting can contact jennifer.silverthorne@uchsc.edu to schedule a date and time.

Tool Box

• Appendix A - Process Diagram
• Appendix B - Principal Investigator and Primary Contact (Administrator) Instructions NEW INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAC USERS
• Appendix C - Approving Officials (Department Chair, Division Head, or Director and Dean) Instructions
• Appendix E - Pilot Study Agreement for Electronic Proposal Routing
• Appendix F – Instruction for Completing the Approval of Application for Grant or Contract (Routing Form)
• Outlook Generic Email Account NEW METHOD
• Tran_DSN_v9
• Tran_DSN_v8
• EPR Form
• EPR Supplement