WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY

Office of Sponsored Programs First Quarter Report, FY 98

JULY 1, 1997-September 30, 1997

Office of Sponsored Programs
106 Foundation Building
Bowling Green, KY 42101-3576
Telephone: (502) 745-4652
FAX: (502) 745-4211
E-mail: Phillip.Myers@Wku.Edu
Home Page: http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Support/SponsPrg/grants/home.htm

January 12, 1998

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

This First Quarter Report covers the activities of the Office of Sponsored Programs at Western Kentucky University from July 1, 1997 -- September 30, 1997. During this period, the University received 70 awards totaling $8,064,272, the most extramurally sponsored money ever awarded to WKU in any one quarter, and submitted 42 proposals totaling $5,561,820. There were 14 fewer awards than a year ago but the dollar amount of awards increased by 49%. Included in the awards was $378,850 in indirect costs, which is the second largest amount of indirect costs awarded in first quarter. A year ago, $317,686 was awarded in indirect costs. There was an increase of 19% in indirect costs awarded compared to a year ago; but a decrease of 4% over two years ago. In addition, WKU cash cost shared $435,819 above the $8,064,272 awarded. Total awards therefore equaled $8,500,091. WKU cost shared 5% to the total award dollars.

Included in the 42 proposals was $723,329 in indirect costs. WKU cash cost shared $779,361 in addition to the $5,561,820 proposed to external sponsors. This makes total proposals equal to $6,341,181. WKU cost shared 12% of the total amount proposed.

Awards

The 49% increase in award amount was caused principally by over $3,000,000 more dollars awarded by Federal agencies for public service projects than last year; and by nearly $400,000 more dollars awarded by Federal agencies for research. The dollar amount of awards for instruction decreased by about $875,000, however. Federal and state sponsors, in that order, contributed the most awards. The average size of awards was $115,204, an 80% increase over a year ago.

Proposals

The dollar amount of proposals submitted decreased by $75,552 (-1%) compared to a year ago. There were 40 fewer proposals than a year ago, a 51% decline.

Forty-one percent of the dollar amount of proposals submitted supported Research, whereas 20% of the dollar amount supported research last year, a 21% increase. The dollar amount of research proposals was $1,999,336 more than last year. There were 6 fewer Federal proposals but for $1,105,619 more than last year. There were 12 fewer proposals to state agencies but for $401,872 more than last year. There were 7 fewer proposals to foundations for $167,526 less than last year.

Summary Awards and Proposals Comparisons with Previous Years

Western received the highest amount of award dollars in any first quarter. The dollar amount of proposals, however, was the lowest in the last three years. The following table summrizes the data.

Other Activities in the Sponsored Programs Community

Sponsored Programs continued to rely heavily on the WKUNET to expedite operations through widespread use of e-mail with project directors. Electronic postings were made of grant opportunities, deadlines, tips, and policies and procedures. The OSP home page provides faculty and staff members with information from the grant community nationwide. Issues of local.grants, the OSP newsletter, were placed on the OSP home page and direct mailed. Monthly tallies of awards received and proposals submitted were published in On Campus and on the OSP web page. The home page contains information to facilitate pre- and post-award developments for the campus.

Summary of Other Activities of the OSP during the First Quarter FY 98

The OSP assists departments with subgrants and non-cash affiliation agreements. The OSP coordinated 23 subgrants to other institutions totaling $530,505, and 99 affiliation agreements with regional hospitals, clinics, and medical offices on behalf of internship programs in Consumer and Family Sciences, Nursing, and Public Health.

The OSP staff attended professional meetings and chaired or served on university committees dealing with intellectual property, conflict of interest, faculty research, human subjects of research, women's issues, and records management, re-organizing the Office of Budget and Management Information, including its institutional research arm, and internationalizing Western.

Funding Agencies

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REPORTS

As you can see by consulting any of the tables in the appendices, brevity is required for entries into the OSP database of awards and proposals. Each database sheet is a record containing one award or proposal. There are a number of fields in each record which require brevity. For this reason, the following abbreviations are used for consistency in creating reports and the data that the reports produce.

Funding Agencies

INTRODUCTION

The Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) provides pre- and post-award services for faculty, staff members, and students seeking external support for research and proposal development, instruction and public service, scholarships, and fellowships. The OSP helps faculty and staff members develop grants, memorandum of agreements, contracts, subcontracts (subgrants), and affiliation agreements. The OSP is the link between extramural projects and the Offices of Academic Affairs, Graduate College and Research, Accounts and Fiscal Services, and Budget and Information Management. For example, the office works closely with Budget and Management Information in projecting extramural expenditures and revenues.

The OSP coordinates with academic colleges and departments, and all support units of the University. On behalf of these entities, the OSP coordinates proposal and award routing; maintains records of faculty and staff members' interests; identifies potential sponsors; assists with proposal development; presents grant development and compliance workshops; cooperates with grant development initiatives of the deans, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and units across the campus; provides individual consultation; renders contract compliance and institutional assurance; establishes charts of accounts for awards; negotiates post-award modifications; provides liaison with external agencies on behalf of the University, and computes the University indirect cost rates and negotiates the rates with the cognizant Federal agency. The OSP manages intellectual property and copyright matters.

AWARDS RECEIVED, 1st Quarter FY 98

The dollar amount of awards was the highest in Western's history for this reporting period. In this reporting period, Western Kentucky University received 70 awards in the amount of $8,064,272 that included $378,880 in indirect costs awarded. (See Appendix A.) Compared to last year, these data reflect a decrease of 14 awards. The award dollar amount increased from last year by $2,648,290, or +49%.

Compared to last year, there was an increase of $61,194 in indirect recovery costs (+19%). Indirect costs awarded a year ago equalled $317,686.

Table 1: AWARDS RECEIVED, 1995-1997

Table 2: Awards Received by Academic College and Other Units 1st Quarter FY 98

Awards Received by Academic Departments, 1st Quarter FY 98

Thirteen academic departments, four less than last year, and the same as 1995, and 25 faculty members (11 less than last year) received 32 awards. This number of awards was 46% of the total awards, 37 percent of the award dollars, and 23% of the indirect costs. Last year 17 academic departments received 36% of total number of awards, 49% of award dollars and 59% of indirect costs. In Table 3b, individuals receiving more than one award are signified with the number of awards in parenthesis.

Table 3a: 1st Quarter FY 98-Summary of Academic Departments' Contributions to Awards

Table 3b: Academic Departments' Contribution to Awards 1st Quarter FY 98

Table 4: Awards Received by Chief Support Units, 1st Quarter FY 98

Chief support units contributed 62% of the dollar amount of awards. They contributed 75% of the indirect costs derived from awards. In all, 6 project directors in 6 support units received awards.

Table 5: Awards Received by Award Type 1st Quarter FY 98

There were 11 fewer grants but they totaled $3,040,902 more than last year. There were 7 fewer MOAs but for $618,079 more dollars than last year. There were 2 more subcontracts for $96,526 more than last year. There were 2 more contracts totaling $1,065,217 less than last year.

Table 6: Awards Received by Project Type 1st Quarter FY 98

Compared to last year, there were 7 fewer awards for instruction. The dollar amount of awards for instruction decreased $874,446. There was 1 more awards for research but for $387,520 more dollars. There were 6 fewer public service awards but for $3,176,216 more dollars than last year. There was a $1,000 dollar increase in the amount of research scholarships awarded.

Table 7: Awards by Funding Sources 1st Quarter FY 98

There were 5 more federal awards than last year but for $2,965,415 more dollars. There were 5 fewer state awards than last year for $413,555 more dollars. We received 13 fewer awards from other public institutions (local government, research foundations and regional companies) for $688,680 fewer dollars. There were no awards from private foundations. The large increases in awards from federal and state sources explains our increase in total awards compared to last year.

Table 8: Top Ten Awarding Agencies 1st Quarter FY 1998

Thirty-four sponsors made awards to WKU during this reporting period. The top ten are listed below. These ten sponsors contributed 89% of the dollars awarded and 78% of the indirect costs. Last year the top ten contributed 73% of the funding; and in 1995 the top ten contribution was 87% of the dollars awarded.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Table 9. Number and Amount of Proposals Submitted, FY 88-98

The third largest dollar amount of proposals in this period were submitted during the first quarter FY 98. In this reporting period, 14 academic departments, 3 less than last year, and 7 support units, 1 more than last year, comprising 21 faculty (4 less than last year) and 9 staff (2 less than last year), submitted 42 proposals (42 less than last year) totaling $5,561,820. Compared to last year, there was a 51% decrease in the number of proposals but, more importantly, a 1% decrease in the dollar value of proposals.

Table 10: Proposals by College and Other Units, First Quarter, FY 98

Table 11. Academic Departments Submitting Proposals, First Quarter, FY 98

Academic departments submitted 78% of the total dollar amount of proposals and accounted for 60% of the total number of proposals that were submitted. Twelve fewer faculty submitted proposals than last year. Three fewer academic departments submitted proposals than last year. The academic departments accounted for 92% of the indirect costs proposed. The academic departments submitted $2,044,703 more in proposals than last year.

Table 11a: Support Units Submitting Proposals, First Quarter, FY 98

Seven support units submitted 17 proposals for $1,239,046. Of this amount, $54,683 was in indirect costs. Compared to last year, 1 more units submitted proposals. However, this year the support units submitted $319,726 more in proposals than last year.

Table 11b: Proposals by Support Units in Academic Colleges, 1st Quarter, FY 98

Included in the units in Table 11a were two support units in academic colleges that submitted proposals amounting to $962,047 which included $45,538 in indirect costs proposed. These proposals were submitted by 2 project directors and represented 2 projects.

Table 12. Proposals Submitted by Project Type, First Quarter, FY 98

Forty-one percent of the dollar amount of proposals supported Research, whereas 20% of the dollar amount supported research last year. The dollar amount of research proposals in this FY was $1,999,336 more than last year. There were 3 more proposals for research than last year. There were 19 fewer proposals for Instruction than last year, but the dollar amount was $351,818 more. There were 21 fewer Public Service proposals than last year and the dollar amount this year was $2,114,706 less.

Table 13: Proposals Submitted by Agency Type, First Quarter, FY 98

There were 6 fewer Federal proposals but for $1,105,619 more than last year. There were 12 fewer proposals to state agencies for $401,872 less than last year. There were 22 fewer proposals to Private agencies for $783,115 less than last year. Within the Private category, there were 7 fewer proposals to foundations but for $167,526 less than last year.

Table 14: Top Ten Sponsors In Proposals Submitted, First Quarter, FY 98

31% of the proposals were submitted to ten sponsors. These top ten sponsors constituted 1% less than the number of proposals to the top 10 last year. Then, the number of submissions to the top ten was 32%. The dollar value of proposals to the top ten sponsors constituted 94% of the total dollars proposed. Last year the dollar value was 85%. Federal sponsors were conspicuous among the top ten. 98% of the indirect costs proposed were submitted to the top ten sponsors below, which was 8% over last year.

Table 15: Indirect Costs in Proposals Submitted, First Quarter, FY 98

Indirect costs were included in 28 of the 42 proposals submitted (67%).

COST SHARING IN GRANTS AWARDED, First Quarter, FY 98

Cost sharing by the university reflects full costing of budgets and enables accurate cost sharing budget projections. In this reporting period, $435,819, or 5% above the $8,064,272 awarded by external sponsors, consisted of WKU cost sharing as Table 16 shows. The OSP Contributions accounts contributed 28% of the total costs WKU shared in awards, $123,800. Adding the university cost sharing to the awards from external sponsors means that the total amount of cash awards was $8,500,091. The university cash cost shared 2% less than in the previous year.

Table 16: Summary of Cash Cost Sharing Awarded by WKU First Quarter, FY 96-98

Table 16 discloses that of the 42 awards for this quarter, 14, or 33%, carried cost sharing obligations. Of the 14, 6 used OSP contributions. Table 17 depicts the distribution and amounts of cost sharing compared to the previous quarter last year. 11% more cost sharing dollars were awarded this year in total dollar amount than in the previous year.

Table 17. Cost Sharing in Grants Awarded FY 96-98

Table 18: Cost Sharing Awarded from OSP Contributions Accounts, 1st Quarter, FY 98

As the Table 18 shows, $123,800 was awarded out of OSP Contributions Accounts.

Table 19: Total and Indirect Cost Sharing in Awards by Unit First Quarter, FY 98

There was $72,663 in indirect cost sharing for 9 units. A year ago, 8 units indirect cost shared $221,940; and two years ago, 6 units cost shared $98,780.

COST SHARING IN PROPOSALS SUBMITTED First Quarter, FY 98

In addition to the $5,561,820 external funds requested, $779,361 was proposed as university cost sharing. The sum of these numbers equals the total proposals of 6,341,181. Cost sharing was in 15 of the 42 proposals, or 36%. This cost sharing amount is $221,642 more than last year as Table 20 shows.

Table 20: Cost Sharing in Proposals First Quarter, 1998

Table 21: Cost Sharing of Proposals from OSP Contributions Accounts 1st Quarter 1998

14 percent, or $105,497 of the total of $779,361 cost shared for proposals came from the three Sponsored Programs Contributions accounts as shown below in 981.

Table 22: Total and Indirect Cost Sharing in Proposals by Unit First Quarter, FY 98

AFFILIATION AGREEMENTS BETWEEN WESTERN AND EXTERNAL AGENCIES

The Office of Sponsored Programs assisted 3 academic departments with coordinating 99 affiliation agreements with 3 faculty members. All were with external agencies to initiate and continue student internship programs. These agreements enable faculty members and students to interact with professionals throughout the region to enhance instruction. A breakdown by department submissions for this activity is depicted in Table 23 below. There were 17 more affiliation agreements submitted than last year and 9 more than two years ago.

Table 23. Affiliation Agreements by Department, First Quarter, FY 98

SUBGRANT ACTIVITIES First Quarter, FY98

WKU awarded or extended 23 subgrants to other universities for $530505. 22 were new subgrants and 1 was extended. Ten subgrants were awarded to researchers at the University of Kentucky through the University of Kentucky Research Foundation. Four were awarded to the University of Louisville Research Foundation. One subgrant each was awarded to Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky State University, and Northern Kentucky University. One subgrant was extended and one new one was awarded to Morehead State University. Three subgrants were awarded to Murray State University.

ACTIVITIES OF THE OFFICE OF SPONSORED PROGRAMS

FIRST QUARTER, FY 98

General Activities. The Office of Sponsored Programs Home Page has been online for over two years. The OSP Home Page continues as the primary communication device for Western faculty, staff and students to find sponsors, prepare grants and contracts, and engage in post-award activities. It is a veritable "road map" to successful ventures through grants and contracts! It is updated frequently with new grant and workshop announcements, deadlines, policies and procedures, new potential sponsors, and tips on how to discover funding success. The web site contains downloadable forms for submitting grants. It has a fact page for commonly used information on proposal cover sheets. Applications for approval of protocols for human subjects of research and disclosure statements for conflict of interest and intellectual property and copyright may be downloaded and submitted by attaching the application to email.

The Home Page contains information about OSP staff to contact, current announcements of changes in protocols by sponsors, new considerations for preparing and administering grants and contracts, the mission and resources of OSP, SPIN Online to find sponsors, resources, regulations and links to all federal agencies. The Home Page links you to the Foundation Center, which, in turn, will link you to many other foundations. Statistics about the Commonwealth of Kentucky to help strengthen need statements in proposals are available through this link. Another vital link from the OSP Home Page is to the Kentucky Department of Education. To access any of these links, merely click on contents of interest.

The OSP Home Page may be accessed at: http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Support/SponsPrg/grants/home.htm

Grant Newsletter: The quarterly newsletter, local.grants, featured information for new faculty members. Pamela Napier, the Sponsored Programs Information Coordinator, composes local.grants. Faculty and staff members are welcome to send her information for the newsletter. The next newsletter is slated to come out during first quarter FY 98 and it will welcome new faculty and provide agency updates among other items.

Monthly Reports of Proposals and Awards: Beginning in September of 1996, the OSP began to compile and disseminate a list of faculty and staff who submitted proposals to external sponsors and received awards. It is distributed to the grants community and published in On Campus. Copies disseminated may be found in the Appendices to the quarterly reports and on the OSP web site.

1. Pre-Award Activities.

Grant Workshops: Pamela Napier, Phil Myers, and Deborah Wilkins, the University Counsel, presented the second year of the Affiliation Agreements workshop.

SPIN Searches: During First Quarter, FY 1998, 16 searches for potential sponsors were conducted for faculty, staff and graduate students by Sponsored Programs staff.

Grant development meetings about grants at different stages occurred with 66 faculty and staff members and students.

Email Network: Grant announcements were emailed to faculty and staff on targeted Sponsored Programs mailing lists. These messages contained announcements for new grant competitions, deadlines for submissions, tips on writing to various sponsors, and recent compliance regulations as revised or initially incorporated by agencies. The community was informed when comments were requested by various government agencies during the formulation of new policies

2. Post-Award Activities.

Six post-award meetings were held with numerous project directors about budgets, modifications, carry over funds, extensions, and final reports. The following table indicates the number of charts of accounts established during First Quarter, FY98.

Table 24. Charts of Accounts

3. Human Subjects of Research (HSRB). The HSRB meets on the third Friday of each month to consider protocols. Several new members joined the HSRB to serve three year terms. Seven projects were approved by the Human Subjects Review Board during First Quarter, FY 98. The level of approval is shown in the table below. All human subjects information, links to federal sources and application forms are available on the OSP Home Page.

Human Subjects Review Board Actions

4. Coordination with the General Representative in Washington, D.C. Workforce development, status of VA/HUD appropriations, and the appropriations report for funding targets are initiatives being pursued.

5. The Guide to the Preparation of Grants and Contracts may be found on the OSP Home Page.

6. Policy Formation. A policy for compensating twelve-month adminstrators for overload activities was drafted. A position paper was written to transfer final signature authority for all but special external documents to the Office of Sponsored Programs.

7. Professional Development Activities of the OSP Staff. Phil Myers attended the NCURA summer conference at South Lake Tahoe on Re-engineering Sponsored Programs Office for electronic research administration. Pamela Napier and Phil Myers attended the Office of Federal Program Annual Meeting in Washington, D. C. Marilyn Anderson, Pamela Napier, and Phil Myers went to Lexington for a demonstration of the electronic pre-award system called STAIRS recently implemented by UK Staff participated in the search to fill the vacant Sponsored Programs Development Coordinator position.

A state-of-the-art copy machine was obtained to expedite copying and collating of proposals and other documents.

8. Task Forces. Pamela Napier continued with the Status of Women on Campus Task Force. Marilyn Anderson represented the OSP on the Files Management Task Force. Phil Myers served on Task Forces for Internationalizing Western and for Re-organizing the Office of Institutional Research. The Workforce Development Group continued to draft a proposal and research new sources. Significant coordination occurred with the Housing Authority of Bowling Green culminating in a roundtable and partnership agreement. Phil Myers continued on the Training and Development Committee to develop workshops sponsored by Human Resources.

9. Intellectual Property Committee. No activities.

10. Conflict of Interest Review Committee. No activities.

Appendices to the quarterly report are available in hard-copy format in the Office of Sponsored Programs. Please call x4652, if you would like to see them.

END

Last update made September 25, 1998.
Send comments to: Sponsored Programs Director phillip.myers@wku.edu
All contents copyright (C) 1998. Western Kentucky University.