Following a fall 2024 site visit by the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA), the Office of Research and UGA Finance and Administration have empaneled a team to review and oversee implementation of recommendations emerging from the NCURA visit — and created a mechanism for the research community to track progress on those recommendations.
The Recommendations Prioritization and Implementation Oversight Team (RPIOT), comprising 18 faculty and staff representing a cross-section of UGA academic and research units, convened in the spring to review NCURA’s report and turn its findings into actionable steps. The RPIOT team broke down its recommendations into three broad categories — staffing and training, processes, and communications — and established priority levels for each individual improvement.
“There is much meaningful work to be accomplished,” said Scott Ardoin, professor and associate dean for research in the Mary Frances Early College of Education, who leads the RPIOT team in his capacity as an Office of Research Faculty Fellow. “The NCURA report makes two things abundantly clear: We must enhance the clarity of the grant awarding processes and address staffing gaps to support our research enterprise.”
After delivering its recommendations to interim Vice President for Research Chris King and Ryan Nesbit, vice president for finance and administration, RPIOT began a shift from a review team to an implementation oversight team, and there have already been some early wins.
Addressing the first concern, RPIOT worked with Shawn Hill, director of programs and change management for both the Office of Research and F&A, to create an online tracker that allows the research community to see progress toward addressing the recommendations. This Research Improvements & Support Enhancements (RISE) tracker is published and accessible to anyone at UGA.
Regarding staffing, while Sponsored Projects Administration has added positions in recent years to try to keep pace with the growth of UGA’s sponsored projects portfolio, ensuring sufficient staffing remains an ongoing concern. NCURA recommended cross-training to allow greater flexibility and nimbleness in the awarding and contracts teams. Cross-training within SPA was completed last fall, even as NCURA was still developing its report.
“Our guiding principle in the Office of Research is to offer the best possible service and support to UGA investigators across the entire research enterprise,” King said. “In partnership with Vice President for Finance and Administration Ryan Nesbit, we continue to work with UGA leadership to identify the most strategic needs — whether they be related to staffing levels, process improvements, more effective communications, or other facets of our work — as well as the resources necessary to address those needs.
“I’m grateful both to NCURA for providing us a roadmap to enhanced research support, and to the RPIOT team for translating NCURA’s recommendations into actionable steps we can take.”
Additional areas of focus include process automation to optimize the use of current staff time, redistributing work across the SPA Team, and self-service options through improved data and reporting tools.
“Our role is to make sure the financial and administrative framework keeps pace with the needs of our research enterprise,” Nesbit said. “Whether that’s through staffing, process improvements or technology, we want to reduce barriers while remaining compliant with required regulations so research can move forward more efficiently.”