UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State has announced the establishment of the new Office of Research Administration Services (ORAS), under the Office of Senior Vice President for Research (OSVPR), to manage the Office of Sponsored Programs, the Office of Research Accounting and other new offices. John Hanold, associate vice president for research and former director of the Office of Sponsored Programs, will lead ORAS.
ORAS is the next step in the Research Support Transformation Project (RSTP), which was initiated by Andrew Read, senior vice president for research, and is supported by other executive sponsors to improve the usability and transparency of Penn State research support processes for researchers, sponsors, research administrators and research project managers, and to empower future growth of the Penn State research enterprise.
“The establishment of ORAS underscores our continued commitment to research excellence and innovation, which is part of our Research Support Transformation Project,” Read said. “RSTP was designed to transform research support operations, enabling researchers to focus on solving critical problems affecting society and our world.”
In addition to the Office of Sponsored Programs, which oversees proposal submission and contract review, and the Office of Research Accounting, formerly under the Office of Finance and Business, which is responsible for account set-up, invoicing and financial reporting, ORAS also will include two new units: the Financial Analysis and Compliance Office (FACO) and the Subaward Administration and Compliance Office (SACO).
The FACO will work closely with the Office of Internal Audit and college research offices to ensure restricted grants and contracts are properly monitored and driven to a successful close. This group will review high-risk transactions, identify areas of weakness and work with the Penn State post award community to identify opportunities for improvement. FACO also will support training, professional development and exchanges of best practices among the members of the post-award community.
The SACO will partner with the College of Engineering to design a new model for managing Penn State subawards and subcontracts — a subaward is the legal instrument issued to a lower-tier collaborator under a Federal Financial Assistance Award and a subcontract is the legal instrument issued to a third party under a Federal Contract to perform a portion of the programmatic effort. Penn State has $203 million in currently active subs, not including subs managed by the Applied Research Laboratory and the College of Medicine. The goals of SACO are to support faster set-up of new subs, more timely payment of invoices, better documentation of subrecipient monitoring, a better tool for communicating subrecipient performance with principal investigators and a more efficient closeout process. If this effort proves successful, other colleges will have the opportunity to opt in
“The four offices are intended to complement and support each other,” Hanold said. “New tools are being built to deliver OSP data to the SACO that will allow them to initiate subcontracting activity more expeditiously. The SACO, in turn, will be in a better position to document compliance with federally mandated subrecipient monitoring requirements, which will make it easier for OSP to close out the subcontract at project end. This will complement the FACO’s efforts to finalize cost accounting, so that the Research Accounting Office can generate final financial reports without delay. The overall structure is designed to monitor key performance indicators and deliver the best possible service to our faculty and our sponsors.”
Visit the Research Support Transformation Project SharePoint site to get more information about the project, access a feedback portal and receive updates on various workstreams.