It’s Only Quiet on the Blog
I apologize in advance for the dearth of blog posts this week. We are, in a word, slammed. Drowning in proposals. Completely snowed under. Working all hours. Not entirely sure we will survive. While...
View ArticleUpcoming State Salary Increases and Your Grant Budgets
No doubt everyone has seen the Governor’s email about the budget recommendations for much needed salary increases for VCU faculty and staff. This has implications for your grant proposal budgets going...
View ArticleRAMS-SPOT Implementation Update
As you may already know, our pilot proposal submissions via the new RAMS-SPOT system are complete, and went very, very well! We are in the “soft launch” phase now, where we have the option of...
View ArticleVCU 2015-2016 CAREER Academy
This just in from the Office of Research: Dear Colleagues, The Office of Research and Innovation is pleased to announce that we will support another cohort of the VCU CAREER Academy in 2015-2016. The...
View ArticleThursday Top Ten: What YOU Need to Know About RAMS-SPOT
This week’s Thursday Top Ten is all about RAMS-SPOT! No doubt you’ve been hearing a lot about this system lately at VCU, especially if your work includes any type of grant management activity! Here’s...
View ArticleIt’s Time for NCURA Region III’s Annual Spring Meeting
I will be away from the office Friday and all next week for the annual NCURA Region III Spring Meeting in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. While there, I’ll be networking with my colleagues at other...
View ArticleNCURA Region III Update: NIH
While at the NCURA Region III Spring meeting last week, I had a chance to attend a session called “Ask NIH” where attendees could ask DD Rutberg (from the Dental Institute at NIH) all their burning NIH...
View ArticleNCURA Region III Update: NSF
At the NCURA Region III Spring Meeting, I attended a session entitled “NSF Update” presented by Beth Strausser from NSF. Here are the highlights: NSF’s FY16 budget request was $7.7B, an increase of...
View ArticleNew Fringe Benefits Rates for FY16
The FY16 fringe benefits rates have been received! For pay periods after June 10, 2015 (that is, all future grant proposal budgets), the rates are: 36.3% for full time 8.5% for part time/hourly The...
View ArticleThursday Top Ten: Things You Can Do in a RAMS-SPOT Proposal Record
Today’s top ten focuses on what you can do from within your RAMS-SPOT proposal record! 1) You can access the system at https://spot.research.vcu.edu. Log in with your VCU EID and password. Your home...
View ArticleFunding Monday: Commonwealth Health Research Board
This just in from the Office of Research: The Office of Research and Innovation has been notified of a limited submission opportunity from the Commonwealth Health Research Board. CHRB has revised...
View ArticleNews Roundup: NSF Compliance Update, Animal use in biomedical research, NIH...
This week’s news roundup is chock full of fun: NSF is making updates to FastLane on July 24 that will implement a new set of automated compliance checks in the system. This makes it more likely that...
View ArticleThursday Top Ten: Things You Should Never Say to a Research Administrator
This week’s Top Ten features the top things you shouldn’t say (but probably do!) to your research administrator. I’ve heard them all. Multiple times..this week. I still love you all. 1) “Just push...
View ArticleNCURA AM57 Recap
Heather and I really enjoyed last week’s NCURA Annual Meeting in Washington DC! Here’s a quick recap of the conference (with more specific info to come, of course!): Our very own Thursday Top Ten...
View ArticleThursday Top Ten: Reasons We Love Research Administration
This week’s Top Ten focuses on the reasons we love this profession. Our daily lives are often so busy and stressful that we can lose sight of all the positives involved. These are the top ten reasons...
View ArticleNews Roundup: NIH Policy Updates, Intellectual Property
NIH 2016 Grant Policy Updates are out! Check out the significant changes here. Need to use the Closeout features in eRA Commons, but don’t know how? Not anymore! FAQs are available here. Missing...
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Are You Ready?
Today’s post is reblogged from Jessica Venable’s official Ready, Set, Grant! blog! Make sure you sign up for and attend these exciting sessions! After months of planning, we are pleased to announce...
View ArticleNews Roundup: NIH Special!
We have a special News Roundup for you this week, and it’s all about NIH. NIH has raised the salary cap. NOT-OD-16-045 raises the maximum salary on NIH support from $183,300 to $185,100 effective...
View ArticleLatest Happenings in CHS-OSP
You may notice this week that our blog posts are less frequent than usual. This will likely continue over the next few weeks because we are in the middle of our busiest time of the year, when our...
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Special Update: OSP Staffing Levels are Critical!
We received an email from our central OSP office this morning that we need to share with you. This is OSP’s current proposal pipeline for this week: Our OSP office works very hard, but they are...
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