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Proposals & Awards

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Accept an Award and Set Up Accounts

Accept an Award and Set Up Accounts

ACCEPT AWARD & SET UP ACCOUNTS

Accepting an Award

Just-in-Time Information

NIH (through its grants management specialists), and occasionally other sponsors, will request evidence of compliance approvals prior to issuing an award. Depending on the sponsor and the project, the agency will be requesting evidence of CITI certification, IRB and/or IACUC approval and current “Other Support” for all key personnel.

The information needs to be prepared by the PI with departmental assistance and forwarded to OSP for submission to the agency.

NIH also sends automated requests for just-in-time information for all applications scoring 40 or less, usually within fifteen days of the scoring. Upon receipt of this request, a review of how close the score is to the sponsor's "payline" should help the PI decide if initiating the protocol reviews for any relevant compliance areas is worthwhile.

Green Sheet Information

Green Sheets provide summaries of Award terms and conditions that require active monitoring and provide records of actions taken on an award by Georgia State.

Once an award has been accepted, its budget verified and all compliance areas approved, a Green Sheet will be distributed to the PI/PD and department administrator(s).  Green Sheets will also be generated and distributed for post-award actions that affect budgets and periods of performance.

If an award notice is received, PIs may submit a Request for Release of Funds Prior to IRB Approval for awards that require IRB approval, or a Request for Release of Funds Prior to IACUC Approval for awards that require IACUC approval. This form should be completed and submitted to OSP for approval.

Negotiating the Terms and Conditions of Awards

Negotiation of grant agreements occurs between the sponsor and OSP officers if OSP determines that the award document contains conditions that conflict with important interests of the University. Generally, terms are negotiated to meet the following goals of the university:

  1. Maintaining control of its work and work product;
  2. Ensuring its compliance with appropriate legal requirements;
  3. Minimizing its risk of liability in the performance of its activities.

OSP views each of these negotiations as a collaborative process with the sponsor seeking determination of the interests we share to overcome what appear to be issues of division, as a series of communications in which we explore, determine, and state our real needs, recognizing that “positions” (often stated as the specific terms in an agreement) are often artificial statements which can obscure each of our real interests.

The Standard Terms and Conditions desired within sponsored research awards at Georgia State are stated in the GSU Research Agreement which Georgia State encourages sponsors to use as an agreement template. These terms are designed to promote the university’s research enterprise by limiting the university’s risk to actions under its control, by protecting its fundamental knowledge-driven mission and by ensuring its ability to meet its legal and social obligations. These principles determine Georgia State’s needs in the negotiation of its agreements with all sponsors, many of whom use their own agreement templates.

Following are some of the areas in which negotiation typically occurs with the position usually taken by Georgia State:

The Parties to the Agreement

The Parties to the Agreement will always be the sponsor and Georgia State. The university is the primary party because the investigator is acting as an employee of the university and using university resources in the execution of the project, according to the university's full responsibility for the project activities.

Replacement of Personnel

Replacement of Personnel is usually at the discretion of Georgia State to ensure that the university maintains its ability to operate with academic freedom and without feeling constrained to use only personnel likely to reach research conclusions favorable to the sponsor. If the Principal Investigator must leave a project, the sponsor will be provided the right to approve a replacement or to terminate the project, recognizing the sponsor’s continuing right to make its funding determination upon the scientific expertise of the PI.

Conduct of the Project

Conduct of the Project is kept primarily under the control of the Georgia State PI to ensure that any research conclusions result from the science without concern for sponsor-desired results. So, sponsors may be permitted the right to review technical reports in accordance with the scope of work but will not be permitted to generally “approve” those reports because the need for such approval could pressure an investigator to try to satisfy the sponsor by altering the research conclusions.

Costs and Payments

Costs and Payments should be specified and determined by the investigator’s performance of the work scope and not by the provision of particular results, again preserving the academic integrity of the university. A negotiated schedule of payments may reflect the fiscal integrity and history of the sponsor, accelerating payment in circumstances where timely payment may appear less certain or where the university may have to otherwise advance substantial funds.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property provisions are designed to protect the investigator’s right to discuss and publish research findings and to manage and protect the property rights of the university and the investigator. The primary forms of intellectual property that concern sponsored research are data, things that could be copyrighted (writings, drawings, software, etc.), and inventions. Guidance about and assistance with the IP provisions of agreements will be sought from the Georgia State Office of Technology Licensing and Commercialization.

Background IP

Background IP is IP available to either party that is brought into the current research. Because it is used for that research, the parties formally grant each the right to use that IP only for that research project. It is possible that a Georgia State investigator will unknowingly use background IP neither owned by nor licensed to Georgia State. Because of this possibility and because of the expense entailed in attempting to determine the existence and control of background IP, Georgia State will not guarantee to a sponsor that any background IP is under its legal control. It will be the sponsor’s responsibility, if commercializing some developed IP, to use its resources to determine that any background IP is appropriately owned or licensed.

Ownership of Intellectual Property

Ownership of Intellectual Property is retained by Georgia State if the IP is invented by the Georgia State investigator. This ensures that Georgia State can manage the IP in accordance with its mission to develop and provide knowledge for public benefit. If a sponsor was provided ownership of Georgia State IP, the sponsor could decide that the development of the IP countered some other interest and so, simply shelve the invention, preventing its public use. And, a statute (the Bayh-Dole Act) requires that Georgia State own and, where practical, develop inventions created under federally-funded projects so that the inventions can be publicly utilized through commercialization.

Licenses to Intellectual Property

Licenses to Intellectual Property take a variety of forms. Georgia State will generally grant to a sponsor a limited license allowing nonexclusive use of Georgia State IP at no cost for educational and research purposes, preserving the university’s ability to seek commercial application of the invention. Because the value of a license is unknown at the time of agreement (no invention yet exists and so its use and value are purely theoretical), all that can be provided for commercial use in an agreement is an option to negotiate a commercial use license. Georgia State generally avoids granting the right to sublicense any license as that right, allowing the recipient to essentially market its rights to any other entity, significantly devaluing Georgia State’s remaining IP rights.

Royalty agreements

Royalty agreements, in which sponsors seek a share of proceeds from commercialized IP, have become more prevalent in foundation awards.  Georgia State will accept these terms where they can be generalized to language such as “amounts to be negotiated by the parties in consideration of their respective contributions to the development of the invention”. Specific royalty divisions are avoided to prevent inappropriate profits flowing to sponsors where commercialization will occur of currently unknown inventions with unknown commercial value.

Publications

Publications lie at the heart of the university’s mission. To ensure that the university’s research remains curiosity-driven and for the public benefit, its investigators must be able to freely discuss and distribute the results of that research. The university will accept some very limited restrictions on publication rights. Sponsors can be provided copies to review for the existence and removal of proprietary or confidential information. Publication can be delayed for reasonable periods of time to permit the sponsor to seek patent protection or, especially with consortia, to allow an appropriate coordination of publication results among the members. One concern with granting more significant publication restrictions is the possibility that those restrictions would interfere with the university’s ability to employ the fundamental research exclusion barring the enforcement of export control laws.

Warranty Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

Warranty Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability looks like a formulaic boilerplate but serves critical protective functions. It notes the university’s inability to accept responsibility for infringement of others’ intellectual property rights and notes the university’s lack of responsibility for the downstream use of any IP developed by the university and then commercialized. These limitations protect the university from legal actions that could have almost limitless financial consequences (such as a lawsuit alleging negligence in the development of a drug affecting millions of people) from actions---taken by the commercializing entity---over which the university has no control.

Indemnification

Indemnification is a term meaning that one party will defend the other if the other is sued. Georgia State limits its indemnification responsibilities to those actions over which it has or should have control. So Georgia State will indemnify for the wrongful actions of our employees but will not indemnify for the Sponsor’s use of Georgia State’s data or research results. Indemnification is another of those clauses that are numbingly legalistic but fraught with the potential for grave financial harm to the university. As a state institution, Georgia State cannot agree to “hold harmless” any other party in an agreement. We will offer language ensuring that each party is responsible for its actions and harms.

Termination

Termination allows each party to leave the agreement at will. Georgia State usually seeks 30 to 60 days' notice and requires that the clause operate mutually (recognizing that the university, for any number of reasons, may find the research project no longer viable or useful). Georgia State will request that the sponsor remain responsible for non-cancelable commitments (which are usually graduate student stipends) when the sponsor initiates early termination.

Project Reports

Project Reports milestones and timelines will be discussed with the PI to ensure that terms are reasonable and can be met.

Financial Reports

Financial Reports ideally will be due no sooner than 90 days post-termination to provide the department time to fully invoice on the project. Due dates of fewer than 60 days post-termination are nearly impossible to meet because of the possibility of late invoicing and of process limitations within the Spectrum financial system.

Pre-Award/Advance Account

An advance account permits spending prior to and in anticipation of an official Notice of Award. Usually, advance accounts should not be utilized more than 90 days prior to the anticipated start date of a project, recognizing the expanded authority for such spending permitted on most federal awards.

Only in rare circumstances, requiring approval of the OSP Director can advance accounts be used to fund subcontracts.

The department must assume financial responsibility if the sponsor fails to fund the award or disallows any of the advance expenditures, providing a guarantee account for all such unfunded expenditures.

An advance project number may be requested using the Advance Account form in the Research Portal. The form must include the approval of the PI/PD and an individual authorized to commit expenditures on the guarantee account (usually a department chair or chair’s designee).

Included on this form is a statement of assurance that commits the department to reimburse project accounts in the event that the expected sponsor authorization is not provided.

Billing and Contract Types

Billing types refer to the process by which Georgia State will receive payment from sponsors; contract types define broad budgetary restrictions established by sponsors.   There are two of each type and they can be easily confused.

  • Billing Type: Cost Reimbursement requires Georgia State to provide the sponsor with an invoice detailing actual costs on the project for which reimbursement is requested.
  • Billing Type: Fixed Payment requires Georgia State to request from the sponsor payments established by a calendar cycle or by the realization of project milestones. Fixed payment billing types may require that Georgia State maintain accurate cost records and refund to the sponsor any funds not actually expended on the project.
  • Contract Type: Cost Reimbursable will provide reimbursement to Georgia State for only allowable expenses that are properly allocated to the project. There are never residual funds available at the conclusion of a cost reimbursable contract type award.
  • Contract Type: Fixed Price will reimburse Georgia State upon the completion and delivery of specific services/items to the sponsor, regardless of the actual cost to the University of providing those deliverables. Unexpended funds at the project’s conclusion may be transferred to a residual account in accordance with the appropriate Georgia State and School/Department policies.

Budget Setup

  • Based on information in the budget approved by the sponsoring agency, OSP staff record critical award information into the financial accounting system to allow proper processing and tracking of project accounting data. In all, there are 35 characters in this chartfield information for each award, but the information includes a unique five-digit project number or speedtype (i.e. BLC05) that is easier to remember. Upon entering the speedtype, the system will translate and automatically fill in the predefined chartfields. Speed types and speed charts information can be found on the Finance and Administration webpages at Spectrum Chart of Accounts.
  • OSP staff will request from local administrators budget information for account setup that meets two primary purposes: compliance with the sponsor’s requirements and PI access to the funds for all allowable expenditure activities. Critically, to ensure timely staff payment, payroll lines need to be created for each personnel type deployed on the project.  Depending on the award terms, the account lines will be set up to control at either the full budget amount or the amount on each budget line.
  • Because most sponsors allow fairly broad rebudgeting authority, Spectrum budgets are rarely established to control spending on each budget line, thus allowing those individual lines—although not the full budget—to be overspent. Spectrum is used to ensure compliance with award terms; detailed tracking of sponsored budgets is dependent on separate Excel worksheets, which also provide forecasting ability and tracking of unencumbered obligations, and need to be reconciled monthly against the actual spending posted in Spectrum.

Related links:

Obtaining Compliance Approvals

Investigators will need to obtain compliance approvals from the appropriate organizations based on the type of sponsored research activities. OSP checks for compliance protocol approvals prior to releasing sponsored award funds. If an award notice is received, PIs may submit a Request for Release of Funds Prior to IRB Approval for awards that require IRB approval, or a Request for Release of Funds Prior to IACUC Approval for awards that require IACUC approval.

Managing Conflicts of Interest on an Award

The foundation of all scientific and research endeavors is the integrity of the process. To ensure that Georgia State University faculty, students, and staff meet the highest levels of research integrity, this Office provides ongoing support to ensure the proper treatment of human and animal subjects, address lab and biosafety issues, radiation and environmental safety, provides support for export control regulations, addresses conflicts of interest and commitment, and the ethical conduct and reporting of research.

Conflicts of Interest Guidelines and Resources

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For general questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact:

Comfort Brownell, Assistant Vice President for Research, OSP
[email protected], 404-413-3550

Not sure who to contact? Email:
[email protected]

Pre-Award

Katie Pope, Director
[email protected], 404-413-3543

Post-Award

Kavitha Sivakumar, Director
[email protected], 404-413-3501

OSP Contacts

Pre-Award

Katie Pope, Director
[email protected], 404-413-3543

Tulani Murphy, Associate Director
[email protected], 404-413-3571

Timothy Gehret, Associate Director
[email protected], 404-413-3501

Casey Brinsfield, Sponsored Programs Specialist
[email protected], 404-413-3551

Alicia Chapman, Sponsored Programs Officer
[email protected], 404-413-5509

Kenya Parmes, Sponsored Programs Officer
[email protected], 404-413-3575

Tony Burnett, Research Financial Specialist
[email protected], 404-413-3564

Nikcole Moore, Sponsored Programs Officer
[email protected], 404-413-3633

Azjuri Aguebor, Sponsored Programs Officer
[email protected]

Lawrence Mkondya, Sponsored Programs Officer, Senior
[email protected], 404-413-3509

Joyce Wong, Sponsored Programs Officer, Senior
[email protected]

Kenya Kamara, Research Financial Officer
[email protected], 404-413-6675

Post-Award

Kavitha Sivakumar, Director
[email protected], 404-413-3501

Rita Alexander, Associate Director
[email protected], 404-413-3523

Jordan Wilks, Research Financial Officer, Senior
[email protected], 404-413-3634

Curtis Bonner, Research Financial Officer, Senior
[email protected], 404-413-3534

Yolanda Jenkins, Research Financial Officer
[email protected], 404-413-3533

Jennifer Wagnac, Research Financial Officer
[email protected], 404-413-3570

Rachel Cockrell, Research Financial Officer, Senior
[email protected], 404-413-3521

Kendria Swift, Research Financial Specialist, Senior
[email protected], 404-413-3519

Darius Evans, Research Financial Officer
[email protected], 404-413-6675

Jocelyn Peterson, Research Financial Officer, Senior
[email protected], 404-413-3520

Melinda Dixon, Research Financial Officer
[email protected], 404-413-3526

Joyce Wong, Sponsored Programs Officer, Senior
[email protected]

College, Institute & Center Contacts

College of Arts and Sciences

Not sure who to contact? [email protected]

Pre-Award

Post-Award

Perimeter College

School of Public Health

Not sure who to contact? [email protected]

  • Dr. Nancy Devino, Director, Office of Research & Sponsored Projects (ORSP)
    [email protected]    , 404-413-1480

Pre-Award

  • Monica Hollman, GCO III, Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences and Population Health Sciences
    [email protected], 404-413-9313

Post-Award

  • VACANT, GCO III, Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences
  • Traci Streeter-Sherrell, GCO III, Population Health Sciences
    [email protected], 404-413-1797

Mark Chaffin Center for Healthy Development

  • Juarndai Lei Gagnon, Director of Grants, Contracts & Finance
    [email protected], 404-413-1343
  • Katy Spinks, GCO |||, Pre-Award for all MCCHD except CLD state contracts; Post-Award (PCA, NSTRC)
    [email protected] 404-413-1493
  • VACANT, GCO II, Pre- and Post-Award for CLD state contracts
  • VACANT, GCO III, Post-Award for CLD state contracts

University-Level Research Centers 

Andrew Young School of Public Studies

Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing & Health Professions

  • FreSandra Blackburn (Pre- and Post-Award)
    [email protected], 404-413-1086
  • Kevette Woolfalk, Business Manager II (Pre- and Post-Award for Project Healthy Grandparents)
    [email protected], 404-413-1202

College of the Arts

College of Education and Human Development

  • Jaiwan Harris, Director, Office of Research & Sponsored Programs
    [email protected], 404-413-8453

Pre-Award

  • Mi’Yata Johnson-Foreman, Res. Associate II (Crim Ctr, Ctr Eval Res Services, CPS, EPS, Deans' office)
    [email protected], 404-413-8211
  • Stacy Ringo, GCO II (Adult Res. Literacy Ctr, After School Allstars, Learning Sciences, Child Dev Ctr, K&H, Urban Child Studies Ctr)
    [email protected], 404-413-8452
  • Jacqueline Ferrell, GCO II (ECE, CSD, MSE, Dean's office)
    [email protected], 404-413-8296

Post-Award

  • Shaila Philpot, GCO III (After School Allstars, Ctr Eval Res Services, Child Dev Ctr, CSD, MSE, Urban Child Studies Ctr)
    [email protected], 404-413-8096
  • Letitia Williams, GCO II (Dean's office, Crim Ctr, EPS, K&H, MSE)
    [email protected], 404-413-8092
  • Leigh Floyd, GCO II (Adult Res. Literacy Ctr, Learning Sciences)
    [email protected]
  • Autumn Eberhart, Fiscal Grants Specialist (Counseling and Psychological Services)
    [email protected]
  • Jamaal Madison, GCO I (ECE)
    [email protected]

College of Law

  • Mignon Jackson, College Finance Officer (Pre- and Post-Award)
    [email protected], 404-413-9096

Robinson College of Business

  • Laura Villo, Associate Director, Sponsored Research Development (Pre- and Post-Award)
    [email protected], 404-413-7353
  • Tameka Hudson, Business Manager, Institute for Insight
    [email protected], 404-413-7849

Institute for BioMedical Sciences

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