TC OSP News
The Office of Sponsored Programs is located in
Russell Hall, Ground Floor, Room 15.
Last update: June 1, 2018
OSP Staffing Assignments by Department/Center: Please note changes made effective November 6, 2017.
The OSP Staff is:
Paul Kran, Director, 212.678.4106
Natasha Guadalupe, Assistant Director of Client Services, 212.678.8199. In addition to her duties as Assistant Director, Natasha will provide SPA services for:
Accelerated Schools, CCRC, CPRE, CCF, Financial Aid, Huber, ILT, ITS, IUME, Klingenstein, Library, NCREST, Office of School & Community Partnership, Office of International Affairs, Provost's Office, Reading and Writing Project, Resilience Center
Eileen Hawley-Nigro, Senior Sponsored Project Administrator, 212.678.8148
A&H, Cahn Fellows, C&T, CPET, CTSC, EPSA, Hechinger, HD, MST, ORL
Kirsten Talgo, Senior Sponsored Project Administrator, 212.678.4187
BBS, CCP, HBS, ICCCR, Office of Teacher Ed/Peace Corp Fellows
NEWS:
Workshop on Reseearch Data Security, February 29 at 2pm:
The Provost's Office,as part of its continuing series of events on grantsmanship and research, is holding a workshop on Research Data Security. The event will be facilitated by Paul Kran, on behalf of the IRB and Adi Anand, Chief Information Security Officer and will be held on February 28 from 2-3 pm in HM424.
The workshop will start with a brief overview of the new Federal Human Subjects Protections regulations that address data security and a presentation of the college's new data security plan for human subjects research. The data security plan utilizes resources currently supported at TC and available to all researchers.
The discussion of currently supported data platforms will lead to a brief presentation and discussion led by Adi Anand and his team, about the strengths and limitations of these platforms, capabilities and features PIs would like to have but don't, other platforms TC might want to consider supporting and the frustrations that inevitably occur when trying to balance increased concern over data security with increased sponsor emphasis on data sharing.
The data security team is committed to exploring and developing resources that address ALL these issues and finding out what kinds of day-to-day issues TC researchers have that we may not be aware of yet. This event is offered as a first step in an overall needs assessment for secure resources that we hope will do an even better job of facilitating research at TC while protecting sensitive data from potential breaches to the greatest extent possible.
This workshop will be open to all TC faculty and non-faculty researchers as well as project personnel with a role in collecting, storing, sharing and/or granting access to research data.
2) NEW VIDEOS: Prof. Carol Hammer on Federal Education Research Funding and Professor Joe Ciccolo on NIH Funding:
Professor Carol Hammer discusses "Institute of Education Sciences Grant Opportunities: An Overview of Regular and Special Education Funding Mechanisms,” Lecture given January 25, 2017.
Carol Hammer is Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Teachers College.
Professor Joe Ciccolo discusses "How to Get Your Foot in the Door for NIH Funding," Lecture given February 20, 2017.
Joe Ciccolo is Assistant Professor of Applied Physiology at Teachers College.
3) OTHER TC VIDEOS:
Prof. Steve Silverman, Extending our Reach: Research Preparation at Teachers College. Lecture given March 9, 2016
In this lecture Professor Silverman examines issues related to research preparation and how we, as a scholarly community, can examine our current status and how we might move to enhance our already strong programs. A key point of the lecture is that we will want to differentiate preparation for master’s and doctoral students and those planning professional positions and those planning on research careers.
Steve Silverman is a Professor of Education and Senior Advisor to the Provost at Teachers College
Proposal Review Panel Held April 29, 2015
- In these times of scarce research funding, it's good to know as much as possible about the review process, especially what distinguishes funded versus unfunded proposals. On April 29, 2015, the Office of the Provost sponsored a lively discussion among some faculty and staff who have recently been involved on grant panels and external reviews for the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes for Health, and various private foundations. The panel discussion was organized by Professor Andy Gordon in his role as Senior Advisor for Research Development and Debi Slatkin, Director for Special Projects. The faculty and staff on the panel included Alex Bowers, George Bonanno, Andy Gordon, Aaron Pallas, and Debi Slatkin.
Video of the proceedings is accessible using the password: provost.
Finding funding in traditionally unfunded areas:
- Prof. Anand Marri in the Social Studies Education prorgam gave a talk on December 2, 2015 on how to find funding for research and projects that are less frequently supported by sponsors. Video of the procedings is posted to TC's Youtube page.
3 VIDEO: Multimedia resources for Principal Investigators
- The WT Grant Foundation defines its mission as "supporting research to improve the lives of young people." The Foundation has funded projects at TC in the past, but its recently announced focus on improving the use of research findings in practice and cost effectiveness research in education make it an even more likely funding resource for our investigators. They have posted two videos, an overview of the new priorities as well as an overview of the application process that are highly informative.
- The Foundation Center is the premier resource for investigators seeking funding from private foundations. Its target audience is primarily the not-for-profit social service, arts, etc. sector, but their guide to proposal preparation will be useful to investigators who may have never prepared a research proposal for a non-specialist review team.
- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) creates a vast amount of multimedia content for applicants and institutions with NIH funding. Much of it is compliance focused, but two stand out for usefulness to Principal Investigators: The NIH Review Panel Process and the Tips for Applicants. NIH received an additional $2b in funding for FY 2016, which means it can fund proposals much close to its target success rate of 25-30%. It has also reaffirmed its commitment to fund new investigators at the same rate as senior investigators with a NIH track record. Overall, this is the best NIH funding environment in years.
- The National Science Foundation (NSF) also received a significant funding increase this year and expects success rates at around 23%. Its multimedia content doesn't address the grant application or review process, but highlights new discovers made with NSF funds. There is some very interesting stuff to be found there.
- US Department of Education's multimedia content consists almost entirely of speeches given by the acting secretary, James King and aren't of any direct relevance to grant seekers.
All these resources were fairly easy to find by searching "[agency] grants video" so if there are other funders you're interested in, their multimedia content--if it exists--should also be easy to find. We will continue to add to this material as we find it. If you find anything you think might be useful to the broader community, please email a link to kran@tc.edu.
4) New Pre-award grant procedures for proposals including subawards:
Shortly before the winter break, the Office of Grants and Contracts Accounting sent out an email referencing changes to the federal regulations governing grants that went into effect on December 26, 2014. The vast majority of these concern accounting procedures, systems and policies institutions need to have in place in order to receive grants, etc. As the College reviews and implements these new regulations, we will be sending out emails explaining how specific changes affect them. One big set of changes in the regs involve our oversight of subawards. OSP has implemented changes to accommodate the new regs in order create minimal impact on researchers. Here's what you need to know:
1) When we're putting together a grant budget, we may need to ask some additional questions to ensure third parties are classified properly as either subawardees or vendors. Click here to review the criteria we use.
2) OSP Staff will be more vigilant in getting the name of an administrative contact in the Sponsored Program Office at your collaborator's institution during the proposal routing process. In addition to the budget, scope of work and letter of commitment we still require from collaborators prior to submission, TC, along with all other universities that receive grant funding, will need collaborating institutions to fill out a detailed questionnaire about their financial systems, certain policies and funding history. This contact information has always been requested. We now require it so we can work in the background with your collaborator's administrative offices while you're completing the programmatic parts of the proposal. If an award results from the proposal, the information on the questionnaire may require OSP to follow up with additional questions and to include additional terms and conditions in the resulting subaward agreement.
3) As always, during the course of the project, investigators are required to approve payment of all invoices from subawardees and to notify OSP immediately if there are significant/unexplained delays getting work product from the collaborator, if the work received is fails to meet the requirements of the prime grant award and/or the terms of the subaward, or if the scope of work changes.