CUR 2002 Workshop Summaries

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CUR 2002 Workshop Report

Session: Dealing with Federal Compliance Issues at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution

Panelists:
Frances Vinal Farnsworth, Middlebury College
Linda Freed, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Chris Craney, Occidental College

Attendance: 24

This session grew out of the December 2001 CUR Quarterly article by Freed and Farnsworth with the same title ( http://www.cur.org/conferences/responsibility/ab_dealfederal.pdf )
Rather than preparing extensive handouts for the session, the presenters mounted their materials on a web site, which is available at http://www.uwosh.edu/grants/cur2002compliance/ .

Focusing on IRB and IACUC issues, Freed reviewed causes and consequences of campus resistance to compliance and suggested strategies for overcoming them (see item 7 on the web site). Farnsworth and Craney then addressed specific mechanisms used on their campuses for informing institutional officials and the campus community in general about their compliance responsibilities. Farnsworth reviewed the compliance mandates checklist used at Middlebury College and her system for documenting institutional procedures and responsibilities. The checklist and associated documents are available as items 2,3 and 4 on the above web site. Farnsworth emphasized that many potential compliance pitfalls on grants can be avoided by dealing with them at the proposal stage, and offered two examples of proposal pre-submission approval forms (items 5 & 6 on the web site) that incorporate compliance matters. Craney reviewed the history of Occidental's compliance system (the catalyst for which was receiving a major federal grant for undergraduate research), and the program of investigator compliance training that he has initiated on that campus. His materials are linked as item 8 on the above web site.

In the discussion that followed, it became evident that there is great need for compliance information and training at PUIs. Recommendations from the session included incorporating of more "nuts and bolts" workshops or roundtables about creating and managing compliance systems into future CUR conferences.