Feb 12, 2012 | 06:39
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May 20, 2009
Campus mobilizes to go after stimulus money in big way
Campus administrators and staffers in many departments have been swept up in the rush to meet grant proposal deadlines as UCLA researchers compete for a chunk of the roughly $20 billion in stimulus money being offered through federal agencies.The epicenter for this frenzy of activity is the Office of Contracts and Grants, located on the third floor of the Kinross Building, which typically handles almost $900 million in research grants and contracts annually. That's where 35 staffers have been working late and on weekends to coordinate the campuswide push to get hundreds of grant proposals by UCLA principal investigators into the hands of the federal agencies by deadlines in March, April and May.
But the tremors are being felt all over the campus as researchers and department administrators work night and day to develop and submit research grant proposals for funds made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). So far, more than 750 proposals requesting more than $300 million have been submitted by UCLA for ARRA funding. The stakes for UCLA are huge, said Vice Chancellor for Research Roberto Peccei:
"The campus is likely to get a significant bump up in its research awards — I estimate it will be on the order of 10 percent to 20 percent. But these new monies have very complex reporting requirements that will require careful tracking to be done.
"This will stress the research administration, human resources and other systems," Peccei warned. "So we will need to make sure we provide adequate support to realize the benefits of the ARRA opportunity."
The campuswide challenge
The funding opportunities are broad – with stimulus money available for both new and existing research projects, to start new centers, renovate labs and purchase equipment. Specific information about how to apply for these grants began trickling in from the agencies in February and through March. The first big deadline UCLA had to meet was April 27 to apply for two-year challenge grants from the National Institutes of Health for funding of $500,000 and under per year. The second big deadline will come May 27.
In the meantime, other grant proposals have been going out to the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, among others. And non-ARRA proposals to federal agencies, foundations and nonprofit organizations continue to be submitted as usual.
"It's very challenging," said Marcia Smith, associate vice chancellor for research administration. "Everything is on a very quick turnaround."
"I've been doing this kind of work for 30 years," said Virginia Anders, acting director for OCGA. "And I've never seen anything like this."
But it's not just the daunting volume of proposals that are coming in in a compressed timeframe from researchers in the Geffen School of Medicine, the Semel Institute, the School of Public Health, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Letters and Science and other units.
It's the unprecedented level of record-keeping and documentation that are required to track, for example, job creation and retention, Smith said. The federal agencies will have to report to Congress on how many jobs have been created and how many have been retained with ARRA funding, so UCLA will have to provide that data for its ARRA grants to the federal agencies.
But there is no system at UCLA to track this information in relation to individual grant awards. So a mechanism needs to be developed through the coordinated efforts of various campus units, including OCGA, Extramural Funds Management (EFM), payroll, human resources and the departments.
"These recovery funds come with unique terms and conditions," explained Smith, who came from UC Berkeley in February to head the Office of Research Administration, which includes OCGA, just as activity began to heat up. "They want to stimulate the economy with this grant money — they want to see that we are spending the money, what we are accomplishing and how we are spending the grant funds. There will be increased oversight by the agencies, including the Offices of Inspector General.
"That means we have to understand what these new requirements are," Smith explained. "And we have to help develop the mechanisms to ensure we can fulfill these reporting commitments. There's a very high level of accountability that comes with this stimulus money."
Speeding it up
Most federal grants require annual financial reports from the university. But for the stimulus grants, the campus needs to file quarterly reports, due on the 10th day after each calendar quarter. "That gives people 10 days to close out their books, transfer costs and correct any errors so that the reports can be finalized," Anders said. "Everything is on fast-forward."
The grant awards, once they come in, will have to be set up immediately so that researchers can show progress in the research projects, and in spending, in the first 120 days of performance. "There's a high level of pressure to make sure these funds are not just set aside for a rainy day. They want the researchers to start work immediately and hire people."
This may trigger a surge of job openings for lab assistants, technicians, postdoctoral students and other researchers. So human resources will need to post positions and process new hires quickly. In addition, other departments are on alert: the purchasing department and other components of corporate finance, and the Office of Research Administration compliance offices that oversee research subject protection.
Working hand in hand with OCGA throughout have been departmental administrators across campus, including designated research administrators who have delegated authority to submit applications for their departments. "There's no way this would work without them," Smith said.
To keep them and other staff updated, OCGA has been holding monthly forums — one such event drew a standing-room-only crowd to a 200-seat auditorium. A help phone line has been set up at (310) 794-0548, manned by two experts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Answers to questions are posted nightly on an FAQ list posted on a new website specifically for the ARRA grants.
See the website for more information.
