4
Rhendy
(09.15.2013 8:00 PM)
0
Something like this happens evyretime we try to submit proposals at my university. And I am not exaggerating. OSP will refuse to approve your budget over a travel or supply budget justification that they don't like. Once, they didn't want to submit my proposal because they didn't like that I had explained in the budget justification that a particular line item in the budget was placed in another section of the budget per our OSP's guidelines. They are constantly questioning how much graduate students get paid. I know multiple faculty at my institution who have had proposals rejected because of something OSP did or did not do. I try to follow the rules (we have a 3-days-prior internal deadline to obtain signatures and turn all hard copy documents into our contract and grants admin, which really turns into more like one-week-prior considering how long it really takes to do anything). I cannot recall a proposal where OSP approved my budget (that is often submitted weeks in advance) before the 3 day deadline. Without an approved budget, OSP won't generate the internal forms that all the university people must sign. And, on top of that, if you miss the internal deadline (whether it is your fault or not) OSP can refuse to submit your proposal. This has not happened to me (yet). So, considering the difficult nature (and sometimes just blatant incompetence) of our OSP, I do not give any contract and grants admin the ability to submit until I am absolutely certain the proposal is correct. I've never gotten hasseled over this (thank goodness), but it certainly would surprise me if our OSP decided to start making a big deal of it. We have a proposal submission satisfaction survey that OSP asks us to complete after every proposal. After completing this multiple times with the same problems/concerns, absolutely nothing has changed. I've quit even filling out the survey since it does no good. I call our OSP the Teflon group...absolutely every concern, problem, etc. just slides right off of the entire organization.
|