Office of Sponsored Programs OSP Weekly 08/30/2019
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Office of Sponsored Programs Transformation
OSP 2020 is what our team is looking towards in the future of reinventing, restructuring and rebranding. Behind the scenes in the next few months OSP is phasing in new changes for a whole new experience for our faculty and administrators.

This past year we have seen much success in growing our staff by filling 8 positions and yet we still have 4 more to go, but we are on our way. We have been phasing in processes within OSP and revving up in developing helpful resources for our faculty and administrators. Many new forms and processes were already implemented this past year and we appreciate the support and feedback we have received.

Cradle to Grave
This fiscal year, new titles and structure began with the restructure of pre-award staff designed as two teams, which allows for streamlining communication and work processes. The new teams are being directed by the new Research Administration Managers (RAM), Hallie Lyons and Stephanie Page .

Hallie Lyons has been with UNLV almost 15 years and brings a distinguished level of institutional knowledge and exceptional research administration. OSP is excited to welcome back, Stephanie Page to UNLV who brings experience leading a research grants department at Roseman University and outstanding research administration. Both Hallie and Stephanie bring excellent customer service and will be leading strong teams working on the lifecycle of awards.  

In addition to the Research Administration Managers, OSP has added a new position to lead the review and negotiations of all sponsored contracts and grants (federal, state, and industry), master agreements, sub awards, incoming MTAs, and NDAs. I am proud to announce the Contract Manager is our very own, Lyndsay Ifo, CRA , who has been with UNLV for a few years and has expanded her extensive background in contract negotiations which she brought with her from her previous institution at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo.  

The Research Administration teams will prepare and submit proposals, manage awards and subawards through project closeout. The teams work directly with the Financial Research Administrators who facilitate the sponsored project fiscal responsibilities.
TEAM GRAY
Hallie Lyons, CRA
Research Administration Manager
Francisco Mejia, CRA
Drew Ehlert, CRA
TBH
TEAM SCARLET
Stephanie Page, CRA
Research Administration Manager
Felicia Sumler, CRA
MinSun Park, CRA
TBH
Mary Vicuna-Howe, CRA
Post Award Director

Jane Kober, CRA
Ruth Lopez, CRA
Quentin Murrel, CRA
Joe Short (temporarily assigned FRA)
Jaime Woods (temporarily assigned FRA)
James Wright
Laura Anders
(2) FRAs TBH
Ted Kober (Part time)
Jessica Chang (Part time)

The FRA Team Leader will be hired which will allow for evaluation of the Workday streamlining of internal processes for OSP. *This search will open soon.

*There are currently open searches for Research Administrators and Financial Research Administrators .
In alignment with the new structure, the reassignment of college units/departments are changing effective 9/1/2019.
After the FRA Team Leader and RAs and FRAs, are hired, the teams will be stronger and college units/departments will still need to be reassigned. Currently, the account workload for any team member is almost 300 accounts and the average across the nation is less than 150 accounts/awards. We are strongly recruiting for more team members. 

With the new structure we have expanded the leadership team and in a few more months, Mary Vicuna-Howe will become the Financial Compliance Manager.  She will oversee sub monitoring, financial reporting, audit, sponsor reviews, cost transfers, collections and all things compliance.

The  Awards Manager, Althea Sheets , will be showcasing UNLV's new funding opportunities portal,  Pivot  (coming soon) and the previous portal through GRC will be discontinued.  Pivot  has access to more than 30,000 funding opportunities. Althea also administers the Limited Submissions, Faculty Opportunity Awards, NSHE/State Recognition awards and the OSP Weekly.
 
The  Program Officer, Leslie Wideman-Henry , maintains the OSP databases for proposals, awards, and records for data agreements, material transfer agreements, etc.
 
The  Assistant to the Executive Director, Jordan Haines  (starts September 1, 2019), will be revitalizing the OSP website and creating an OSP intranet for staff procedures and training. Jordan manages the Executive Director's calendar and is responsible for OSP communications, human resources, finance and our amazing student workers Sakari and Miguel.
 
A most exciting part of this transformation will be the development of an online proposal portal and electronic routing form (like docusign). This is being evaluated now to determine what available platform will be selected.

The complete phasing of the teams will be implemented by the end of 2019. The new year, OSP 2020 will allow for full implementation of the Cradle to Grave to be underway and OSP will be working with our faculty to roll out the newly designed content driven OSP website, streamlined processes for faculty, and faculty engagement. Training's, videos, and face-to-face meetings will become the optimal methods for addressing questions.

OSP is ready and positioned for being Top Tier and being a top tier OSP unit for UNLV - Lori Ciccone, CRA, Executive Director