UAB Synopsis, Vol. 24, No. 22, June 13, 2005
Graduate/Clinical Research Training
Strengthen financial support for biomedical graduate recruitment/education
- Assess current infrastructure and costs of graduate recruitment and core curricula
- Evaluate administrative and financial options for efficient and equitable first-year support
- Determine potential new funding resources for stipend/tuition support
- Consider optimal process for stipend allocation
- Propose multidisciplinary opportunities for extramural graduate funding; assess needs for common support of training grant/fellowship preparation
- Identify incentives for excellence in graduate education and success in graduate funding
Enhance clinical research training infrastructure
- Determine mechanisms to strengthen recruitment of medical students, residents, and fellows for clinical or academic research
- Assess clinical research infrastructure regarding space (administrative and teaching), administrative support, inter-school interactions regarding clinical research training
- Create mechanisms to build a clinical research community at trainee and mentor levels
Enhance graduate education and recruitment
- Evaluate graduate entry programs for effectiveness of recruitment and training; compare with benchmark models
- Propose modifications to current graduate training program
- Evaluate alternatives to faculty participation in training programs by departmental appointment process
- Assess long-range desirability for interdisciplinary, rather than departmentally, based degrees
- Evaluate support services and interactions with the Graduate School
- Strengthen or create new recruitment initiatives, such as minority, summer research, science honors programs, and Web interfaces
Enhancement of Research Infrastructure
Centers, Cores, and Bridge Funding
- Evaluate level of central and school support for University-wide interdisciplinary research centers
- Evaluate cores for utility and financial plans
- Gather data on best practices for core support at other universities
- Evaluate funding streams for cores including animal resources
- Evaluate regular review process for cores and emerging technologies
- Evaluate desirability of centralized management for, and increased interrelationships among, cores
- Evaluate feasibility and desirability of improving access to Southern Research Institute capabilities
- Consider promotion criteria appropriate for core leaders
- Evaluate information technology support for research
- Institute a transparent process for bridging investigators through funding lapses
Ease regulatory burdens on investigators
- Create an individualized, integrated Web-based research tool kit that alerts individual faculty as to when training is needed, when last completed, etc.
- Establish links to all required training modules (Institutional Review Board [IRB], Conflict of Interest Review Boards, institutional animal care and use committees, HIPAA, effort reporting, diversity training)
- Add information about effort reporting status on this personalized research page
- Evaluate frequency of effort reporting and training
Improve clinical research infrastructure
- Develop and define responsibilities of Office of Human Research
- Enhance effectiveness of interface with IRB
- Implement of Social Sciences/Behavioral IRB with new protocol forms and training
- Evaluate HIPAA implementation
- Define policies on residual accounts
- Examine indirect rates for nonfederal clinical trials
- Examine administrative costs and charges
- Facilitate Western IRB billing
Improve interface with Grants and Contracts Administration/ Accounting
- Make suggestions for improvement of Oracle
- Expedite new award account and budget setup
- Develop integrated electronic internal grants submission capabilities
- Implement electronic grant submissions to NIH, etc.
- Codify and streamline issues with material transfer agreements and contracts (intellectual property, indemnification, publication rights, etc.)
- Develop contract templates with private sponsors
- Examine review and negotiation expertise for funding sources other than NIH
- Examine systems for identifying and broadcasting opportunities