Sponsored Projects Office Director Pamela Miller sent the following email to the SPO sponews-l mailing list on March 12, 2014:
To the Campus Community:
Thank you for your efforts to ensure that UC Berkeley’s proposals for research funding are submitted on time and in compliance with sponsor requirements. Successful research administration is really a team activity and the Sponsored Projects Office is committed to providing the best support we possibly can to UC Berkeley’s research community.
We know that faculty members and their departmental or Shared Services research administrators are working very hard to meet the campus’s Five Day Proposal Submission policy. At SPO, we want you to know that we are doing our part to efficiently manage on-time proposals and are instituting new measures to provide necessary and timely feedback to the faculty. SPO therefore will provide a response within two working days to all proposals submitted to SPO at least five working days before the funding agency deadline.
To be more specific, if the proposal is complete, SPO will, at minimum, provide a “triage” review within two working days covering the major elements of the proposal required by the sponsor and will inform the principal investigator and/or research administrator of the results. Please note: This will not be the final review of the proposal. After the initial triage review, the SPO CGO will continue to review the proposal and provide a final complete review within the next few days.
If the proposal is incomplete, SPO will identify the missing components required by the sponsor and return the proposal to the PI and/or research administrator within two working days.
If a proposal cannot be submitted on time, even with a draft technical section, the PI should request an exception to the VCR’s late proposal policy. To manage SPO’s workload and to provide equitable treatment to the on-time proposals, late proposals approved by the VCR will be processed after on-time proposals due that same day have been submitted.
We know that submitting applications for funding can be a complex, and at times, stressful activity. At SPO we are working hard with our partners in Shared Services and in the departments to ensure that that the process goes as smoothly as possible and that Berkeley is always positioned to achieve a successful result. Thank you for your assistance.
Pamela F. Miller, Ph.D.
Director, Sponsored Projects Office
University of California at Berkeley
2150 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94704-5940
Phone: 510-642-2925
Email: plfmiller@berkeley.edu
