“APPROVED”
UNIVERSITY RESEARCH COUNCIL MINUTES
January 30, 2012
Members Present:
Lachel Story & Trenton Gould (Health), Sharon Topping & Mike Wittmann (Business), Dana
Fennell & Louis Kyriakoudes (Arts & Letters), Christopher Barry, Richard Mohn (Education &
Psychology), Jorge Brown (Library), Denis Wiesenburg (VPR)
“Via teleconference”
Joyce Shaw (Library)
Members Absent:
Others Present:
Gordon Cannon (VPR),
Michelle Shows (SPA), Syd Conner (SPA),
Carol Sanders (SPA)
The meeting was held in McCain Library Room 203. The meeting was called to order at 5:00
p.m. by Dr. Sharon Topping. The agenda was distributed.
1.
Approval of Minutes
Dr. Topping did not bring copies of the previous minutes. Approval of the minutes was tabled
until a later date.
2.
Discussion & Approval: Scholarly Misconduct Draft
A draft of Scholarly Misconduct was distributed and discussed. Dr. Gordon Cannon mentioned
that references in the handbook were old and needed to be updated. Dr. Topping had concerns
about the Statement of Policies. It was pointed out that an exclusion of students who are not
working scholarly research exists, but if they are working on a grant and getting outside money
then are eligible.
Pg. 4, III. Rights and Responsibilities #9. “Appoint the chair and members… of the
evidence.” Dr. Topping referenced this language and asked about appointments, if the
chair and members are appointed each time. They are experiencing problems with the
elections committee and who can vote each time. Dr. Denis Wiesenburg answered yes,
this not a standing committee because one of the issues is that you have to have someone
with expertise but not in the same department. They are appointed individually. Dr.
Topping asked if there were criteria for fulltime, tenured, tenured tract or clinical. Dr.
Denis Wiesenburg answered that the more specific it is the better for NIH. There is no
requirement and it would be at the best judgment of the RIO officer. More work is
needed on this before the 24 hour deadline.
Pg. 4. #13, “Notify and make reports to HHS or NSF…” applies only if they have grants
or resources are involved. We should absolutely require this statement because this one
can get us in trouble even down to federal citations.
Pg. 6. #7, “Notify and make reports…” allegation has been admitted…” Answer: just
because you admit it doesn’t mean that the procedure is over, but it can be.
Pg. 9. Para.2, “In some instances… independent inquiry”. Dr. Topping asked if NSF
could come in and make an independent inquiry. Answer: Yes.
MOTION: approve with suggested revisions
3.
Update – Office Vice President of Research – Dr. Denis Wiesenburg
 Restructuring of the two Departments OCGA and SPA to come together as one
department. Consolidation of both of the departments will become effective July 1, 2012.
 Approval last Monday from the executive cabinet to hire Assistant VP for Research
Administration. We will do a national search. We will hire a research administrator who
can manage the operations internally, but spend about 15% of his/her time looking
outside the university for best practices and ways to improve both our ability to get
funding and manage funding once we get it. There will be 3 units under the assistant VP:
directors of pre-award, director of post-award, and grants accounting. Location of his/her
office will be in Ms. Connie Wyldmon’s old office. A search committee will be put
together. Dr. Topping, you may want to be on that committee. Dr. Gordon Cannon is
going to head that committee and make the selection of the search committee.
 Research funding dollars are still down. I haven’t seen the January numbers, but we are
happy to have signed a 1.9 million dollar proposal today which will bring those up and
we had 2 over a million dollars in January 2012. As of December 30, 2011, we brought
in over 29 million dollars in new awards and last year we brought at least 72 or 77
million dollars. So, if we doubled that we would still be 16 or 17 million short of where
we were last year. Hopefully, now that the federal government has a budget, things will
pick up.
 The number of proposals is also still down to about 47 from where it was last year.
Remember, we were 20% down (103 proposals) last year. We are trying to do whatever
we can to encourage faculty to get engaged in proposal development. We are
encouraging people to meet with program managers and some have gotten the enthusiasm
to write proposals. We also looking at foundations as a place to go. One of the things we
are considering is putting together a mini grant program for proposal writing based on a
model they have at Mississippi State University. We would have a couple of faculty
compete for a 2,000 dollar award to work on a proposal. It can be used for travel, food
for meetings, bringing in people from other places. At Mississippi State they awarded
forty (40) of those last year, and I think they had 8 million dollars worth of proposals
submitted out of that effort. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on whether that
would be something useful to do. We need to find some additional ways to encourage
faculty to seek external funding. Dr. Topping asked if this would be collaboration with
other universities, you could bring them in. Answer: it could be in collaboration with
your own university. If two or three of you wanted to get together and work on a
proposal, but the expectation is that you would submit a one or two-page document.
There would be a committee to review them. You would pick twenty (20) and set up an
account for $2000. Hopefully, in six (6) months, we would get feedback on what you
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had done. At the end of the year we’d expect a proposal of, hopefully more than $2000
will come out of each of those initiatives, even with a small amount of data like with
NIH. This is not designed to be a seed grant to allow you to do something else. It is
designed to provide money for people to have time or what they need to get together to
craft a proposal. The money could also be used for consultants to help the grant writing
process. What they did at Mississippi State University was that the people who wrote
proposals were then eligible for a $2000 grant the following year to do it again. Those
that didn’t get a proposal it would probably minimize their chances of having another
investment made in their efforts. We are open to any other ideas.
 At the University of South Alabama the VP for Research would give you $500 in your
pay check if you wrote a proposal. But, that’s a different model. The MIDAS model was
put into place in 2003 or 2004 didn’t really yield the results that we wanted. It put a lot of
the MIDAS money went to non-competitive work and some may still do. I think there are
some PI’s that are collecting MIDAS money. If that PI retired and he stuck someone else
in the position the money would still come and the next person would be getting MIDAS
money. The idea was encouragement to write proposals with the ability to buy out some
of your salary but then generate more money. In some cases, it worked but for the
preponderance of them it did not. Of course we’ve modified MIDAS and earmarks are
no longer eligible and are pretty much gone. That wasn’t really what increased the
university’s research awards. The ability of Senator Cochran to send us 20 million dollars
a year is what increased the research awards and that ability is gone. So we need to find
other ways to seek external funding so we can support our research or graduate students.
 Dr. Topping shared that out of the money Dr. Wiesenburg gave the College of Business
for three years, this year for the first time, the College of Business has put together a call
for proposals. The people who submit the proposals have to provide several places, i.e.,
foundations, agencies, etc. where they are going to take this and submit it for funding.
People are interested and we are excited about that. Guidance was requested on which
program officers to meet with in Washington. Dr. Wiesenburg stated they he and Dr.
Cannon meet with people before they go and discuss the best people to see. We have
even volunteered to go with people. You obviously have to do your homework ahead of
time and see what opportunities are out there and go see the program managers
beforehand. There is a research person available in every college except business to talk
to, i.e. Ms. Diana Flosenzier in Science and Technology, Ms. Lynn Harper in Arts and
Letters, Ms. Jennifer Downey in College of Health, and Ms. Susan Mayfield-Johnson in
the College of Ed. Psychology. Every college with the exception of Business has a
person some of which are paid out of VPR office to help faculty find opportunities and
put together proposals. Ms. Jennifer Downey is a proposal writer. You are closer to your
field and I would suggest you visit the i.e. NOAA program officer who is funding your
large NOAA grant. If you haven’t done that, know where they are, make a trip and try to
do something else when you are there. It was shared that Program Managers are the best
sources of information about which other program managers you should talk to. They
can also provide insight into what is expected/details for the proposal that are not clearly
outlined in the RFP that we might otherwise not have known. The websites of the
different centers and institutes also provide invaluable information on opportunities that
are available and what their research agendas and missions are. There is a little bit of
information on the guideline document on the website and what we need to do is add
some additional tips.
ACTION ITEM: Dr. Lachel Story is to scan and send out copies of a document from NIH on
what to do when you go to meet a program officer.
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Dr. Topping suggested taking the information that is being shared back to the colleges.
4.
Discussions and Approval: Internal Approval Form (IAF)
Mrs. Michelle Shows opened discussion of the revised IAF form given to the committee by Dr.
Topping. The differences in the form were explained. We are eventually going to develop an
instructional sheet that will be posted on the website with the IAF form. We will put together a
group of faculty to test the IAF form. This form has been around as long as I have. We have
made minor changes to the form but have always tried to keep it to two pages. It is very similar
to other universities. When you go to other universities you don’t see one or two page forms. The
first two pages are pretty much what we have now. A lot of the information is the same, but is it
expanded and in a different format. We really tried to add more detail. We now have five pages
instead of two. We added on page three where you can name your graduate students if you know
who they are and sometimes that’s important. We actually send this information to Dr. Susan
Siltanen if there are graduate students involved with these waivers and things. Dr. Wiesenburg
added that Dr. Siltanen asked for that section to be added. If there are sub-contracts to be issued,
we really don’t have a place on the current form for that to be added.
On page four we have a space resource requirement which is a one liner, but we really want you
to say, no you don’t need any or yes I do and explain why.
Dr. Wiesenburg elaborated. The default on the form is yes and it forces you to choose no. If you
choose no, you will get a call from your chair asking what space you need. We’ve had some
challenges with faculty understanding the conflict of interest rules. The worst news is that the
conflict of interest rules have gotten even more stringent. On the previous form we had a website
which said do you agree to everything on this website. However, that was not sufficient so we are
stating in the document that even if you have a perceived conflict of interest, you need to disclose
it. HHS has changed the requirements. If you own $5000 of stock in a publicly traded entity that
is related to the work or own any amount of stock in a non public traded entity then you need to
disclose it: mirror companies, privately held companies which are in any way related to the work.
There is almost zero tolerance for reporting. It doesn’t mean that the work will be disapproved.
It means you need to declare the conflict so that it can be evaluated before we agree to submit the
proposal. The rules and compliance have gotten tighter and are being looked at very closely by
the federal agencies now. We have not allowed some things to go through this year because of a
conflict of interest that we had to figure out ourselves. It wasn’t really declared. People were
agreeing to everything on the website and in many instances did not even know what they were
agreeing to.
The signature wording has been expanded and now includes the NSF statement, “By signing
below, I certify that the information . . .” Previously, the NSF statement was on the form
submitted by the head of SPA. Mrs. Shows, when she clicked on the NSF website, was agreeing
to that for the PI, but we were not always getting the PI to sign the statement saying that they
were agreeing that this was true, complete, and accurate. If there are any fraudulent statements or
plagiarism, etc., then we want to make sure that every PI signs that and not just have that certified
by the head of SPA. Dr. Topping asked about the authorizer on the bottom of page 4. Dr.
Wiesenburg said the authorizer is someone authorized to sign on the grant that is not a PI or coPI. I think in Polymer they have staff authorized to approve expenditures. Mrs. Shows explained
that the project categories on the top of page 2 just referred to things that needed to be tracked for
reporting purposes.
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ACTION ITEM: Everyone to review the proposed revised IAF form and give feedback within a
week, by Monday, February 6, 2012.
5.
Report: Innovation Awards Rules (Dr. Lachel Story)
Dr. Story reported that nominations were received, but not from every college. The deadline was
lengthened a couple of weeks to 2/3/2012 to give everyone a chance. We are subsequently
getting a better response from all colleges except Arts and Letters. Dr. Dana Fennel was
surprised because she knew there were nominations. In fairness to the other colleges, there will be
no further extensions but an email of the nominations from the Dean of Arts and Letters will be
acceptable if the dean gets me the nominations and the nominees meet the 2/3/2012 deadline. All
members agreed She reported Good news: there were two research advocate award nominations:
Ms. Connie Wyldmon and Dr. Robert Bateman, five graduate student awards, three academic
partnership awards, one lifetime achievement award, one creative activity award from Science
and Technology, six applied research awards, and four basic research awards, one of which may
be ineligible. It was noted that all application packages need to be hand delivered to Dr. Story.
One exception has been made for a special case.
ACTION ITEM: Dr. Topping to send an email to Dr. Story regarding what the Dean of Arts and
Letters says about the Innovation Awards nominations or the Deans can email the nominees to
Dr. Story and she will bypass a step and contact them directly.
6.
Discussions: Innovation Awards Rules
Dr. Topping mentioned on page six (it was later determined to be an older version of the
document), Research Supporter, and Graduate Student, #4. There is conflict with the sole
nomination of Jerome Kolbo for the lifetime achievement award and Dr. Vernon Asper who does
not remember when he won it. Dr. Story felt that the lifetime achievement trumped all other
awards and anyone who wins it had probably already won an Innovation award
The issue is should we change the rules this late. The wording is not clear. We need to clarify
the wording before next year. Dr. Topping read from the guidelines that previous Innovation
award winners are ineligible for five years from the time of the previous award.
ACTION ITEM: Dr. Story is to email Dr. Kyna Shelley and Ms. Tisha Zelner for Dr. Vernon
Asper’s pervious award status.
ACTION ITEM: Dr. Story to send out a status update to the committee.
ACTION ITEM: Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes is to revise the Innovation award rules (will print the
official version from the website) in accordance with the changes discussed today and submit a
revision for next year.
1. After receiving all the nominations Monday, Dr. Story will make them available for
everyone to review along with a score sheet.
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2. Members will rank the nominees in each category according to who you rate as number
one and on down. They will be kept in the library for review. Two weeks will be allowed
for members to go to the library and review them. Recommendations will go to Dr.
Wiesenburg by the end of the month. We need to have those reviewed by the next
meeting, 2/27/12. Members will come with nominations which we will put in a spread
sheet and we’ll average all those scores and discuss them. I will email the room number
of the library and have some score sheets available. The score sheets can be sent in ahead
of the meeting which would be helpful.
3. To stream line this process, will send individual spread sheets for each to input their own
information.
Dr. Sharon Topping said they needed to determine if Dr. Charles McCormick is still a member of
the URC.
7. Report: University Elections Committee
Dr. Topping discussed the mission of the University Election Committee.
 With all the various councils that exists, i.e., academic, graduate, senate, etc., need to
determine who can vote and who can run in an election.
 Contact Human Resources in order to get a list of faculty defined in the bylaws of each
of those groups
 Run the process electronically. We will oversee the process and pass the information on
to the deans to carry out electronically, same process, just electronically.
 Add election date to the bylaws.
 Determine what the bylaws mean. Only 2 colleges have known college research
committees, one not very active. Dr. Topping to contact Ms. Mary Dane.
There are a lot of communication channels we could use this for.
 Committee rotations (3 year term) to get to where there is no overlap at a later date
ACTION ITEMS: Members to review the bylaws (3 pages) especially the wording of the
elections.
8. Discussions: Website Changes:
Dr. Topping discussed that the website.
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Need to get with website committee to look at what can be done to update it
Need to get the names of committee members changed
Bylaws up to date (sent those to you today)
Innovation Awards nomination up to date
Minutes to be put on the website and up-to-date as much as possible
9. URC Committee Assignments
Web-site Committee: Lachel Story, Chair, Syd Conner, Dr. Sharon Topping
Poster Session Committee: Dana Fennell, Chair, Chris Barry
Display Sessions Committee: Rich Mohn, Joyce Shaw
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Innovations Awards Committee: Lachel Story, Chair, Mike Wittmann, Trent
Gould
Bylaws Committee: Rich Mohn, Chair, Dana Fennell, Chair
Need new Chair for Awards Day
10. Next meeting: Monday, February 27, 2012
11. Adjourn
5:05 pm
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