Administrative Support for Research

Julia S. Taylor
Director, Office of Research Services

The configuration of personnel in research offices varies across Canada but most offices do have similar functions and therefore similar positions. Most research offices are given responsibility over the sponsored research portfolio as well as the regulatory functions such as ethics review, biosafety, and so on. The office is usually the primary liaison between the researcher and the rest of the central administration (Financial Services, Corporate Administration, Facilities Management etc.) on research matters.

Typically, sponsored research funds are divided into three categories: contracts, grants (external) and internal research funds. Some universities find it necessary to distinguish those contracts that are with the private sector from those with governments. International contracts are often treated distinctly as well. The nature and volume of these types of sponsored research are such that expertise is quite specialized and research offices usually try to develop personnel accordingly.

Contracts officers are responsible for review, negotiation, and administration of research funding agreements. Additional activities include: providing information to faculty, staff and students on matters relating to research contracts and intellectual property; providing industrial liaison services for the University; and providing assistance to University of Saskatchewan Technologies Inc. (UST) on intellectual property matters and identification of commercially viable intellectual property. Administration of research agreements typically involves trouble-shooting on contract delivery and account management problems, overhead rate management, and so on. Many contractors have a division that handles agreements (such as Public Works and Government Services Canada, formerly Department of Supply and Services) and the university contracts officer would be the liaison to these divisions. Usually the researchers' contact with the sponsor institution is scientific in nature and these functions are often separated by the sponsor.

Grants officers are responsible for pre- and post-award administration of grants. They facilitate grant applications by reviewing the application to ensure it is complete, assisting in obtaining institutional information not readily available to researchers, and interpreting funding agency regulations. They play a similar role as the contracts officer in post-award administration, being a liaison between the researcher and the funding agency. They have expert knowledge of policies and procedures of the funding agencies (which are often open to interpretation), and so can better achieve researchers' needs within the guidelines of the agency. Most grants officers have a working relationship with the administration at the major granting agencies, particularly the national granting councils. Many observe adjudication sessions in order to get a better idea of the process so they may relay this information back to researchers. They also track those researchers at the university who currently sit on adjudication committees and use them as a resource for peer-review information. Over the course of a year, a grants officer reviews a few hundred grant applications, whereas a researcher may only apply once every three years. This leads to a much wider perspective on grant-writing. Other activities assumed by the grants officer include: organization of grantsmanship workshops, facilitating scholarly reviews of applications, development of a mentor system for junior researchers, developing an accessible library of reference materials on funding sources and grant-writing, establishing and maintaining grants information services, and facilitating the development of collaborations.

The research office usually provides administrative support to departments, colleges and senior administration in the form of collection, storage and analysis of data relevant to the research portfolio. This includes researcher profiles, grant application and success rates, trends in grants and contracts by agency/sector and department, etc. They also initiate research policy development where necessary, and the development and implementation of procedural efficiencies, especially between internal administrative units. The latter has a primary focus on facilitating and supporting research efforts. The research office is responsible for maintaining documentation of research-relevant university policies.

Communication efforts are of an internal and external nature. External communication is handled at the U of S by the Research Communications Officer and University Communications. Internal communications that deal with informational services are generally handled by Research Services as this is information of a more detailed nature (deadlines, guidelines, etc.). Some offices handle research funding information centrally with an information officer position. It is more often done directly by the contracts/grants officers with secretarial support.

Of late, research offices have dealt with major initiatives like the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the implementation of the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethics of Research Involving Humans in a more ad-hoc manner. Resources to deal solely with these initiatives have been secured by secondment of faculty, administrators and so on. Clearly CIHR and compliance with the Tri-Council Policy Statement will require permanent resources. It is possible that CFI will continue, in which case the process for CFI application should be reviewed and resources required should be identified.

Personnel positions for various universities, with their level of sponsored research funding are listed below to give an overview of the level of administrative support in research offices at other institutions.

Research Administration Personnel at Universities
(all institutions also have a VP Research)