Month: April 2017

CITI Program Website Now Secured by UConn NetID

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The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) is pleased to announce that training offered through the CITI Program website is now secured by the UConn Single Sign-On NetID. Faculty, staff, and students at the Storrs and regional campuses will now be able to access the CITI Program website using their UConn NetID and password, instead of/in addition to a specific CITI Program website username and password.

The CITI Program is used by OVPR Research Compliance Services and UConn faculty, staff, students, and affiliates for online training related to animal care and use, biosafety, research with human subjects, NIH Good Clinical Practice, and Responsible Conduct of Research. Since partnering with CITI, over 20,000 UConn learners have used the CITI Program website to fulfill their regulatory training requirements.

Utilizing the UConn Single Sign-On makes it easier for faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students to access the CITI Program training courses with their existing UConn NetID and eliminates a unique username or password specifically for the CITI Program. It also assures faculty, staff, and student learners using CITI are correctly identified in training reports, making it easier to tell if the appropriate coursework has been completed.

To take advantage of this new feature, simply log in through our institution on the CITI Program website at https://www.citiprogram.org instead of using your existing CITI login credentials. Further information about CITI Training requirements for the UConn IRB can be found on our website at https://ovpr.uconn.edu/irb/citi-training/.

 

If you have any questions, please contact Matthew Cook at 860.486.1698 or matthew.cook@uconn.edu.

Elimination of Graduate Research Assistant Tuition on Grants

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April 4, 2017

 

Dear Colleagues:

In our continuing effort to reduce the costs of research at UConn and UConn Health, we are eliminating the requirement to charge any portion of graduate research assistant tuition to research grants, effective Spring 2017.

From 2009 to 2016, University policy required that 60% of full-time in-state tuition per graduate assistant be charged to external grants funding faculty members’ research projects. In Fiscal Year 2016, we reduced the impact of this policy on grant funds by returning an amount equal to half of the tuition collected from grants to faculty investigators’ indirect cost return accounts.

Beginning with charges for the Spring 2017 semester, faculty will no longer be required to charge any portion of graduate research assistant tuition to their grants. Faculty will also no longer be required to include [tuition] charges for graduate research assistants on future grant applications, thus increasing their competitiveness with funding agencies. Savings from graduate research assistant tuition charges can now be applied toward other direct cost needs for faculty research projects. This applies to all sponsored projects, including those being conducted at UConn Health.

Researchers with existing grants or grant applications that include graduate research assistant tuition for Spring 2017 and beyond should rebudget those dollars into other direct cost items, at their discretion within sponsor specific rules. For questions or to request assistance with the rebudgeting process, please reach out to your department grant administrator or your regular contact person in Sponsored Program Services within the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Although this is another positive step towards increasing the buying power of grants for our faculty, we recognize that it does not directly address a major concern contributing to the high cost of doing research at UConn and UConn Health: very high fringe rates relative to our peers and aspirants. While these rates are controlled by the state, we will continue to seek solutions for this important issue.

Despite significant financial constraints, we will continue to pursue creative solutions to decrease the cost of doing research at UConn and UConn Health. Some of the recent initiatives to accomplish this include: providing financial support to PIs impacted by large increases in fringe rates in 2016, establishing direct IDC returns to PIs for the first time at UConn Health, non-research IDC returns for the first time in Storrs, and supporting the NIH-driven increase in minimum salaries for postdoctoral fellows.

Thank you for your continued contributions to UConn/UConn Health’s success as a leading research institution. We look forward to supporting you in your future research activities.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jeff Seemann
Vice President for Research UConn/UConn Health		 Dr. Jeremy Teitelbaum
Interim Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs		 Scott Jordan
Executive Vice President for Administration &
Chief Financial Officer