New UIC Policies on Institutional Base Salary, Effort, and Cost Sharing

Several institutions have recently faced significant fines for non-compliance with federal effort reporting regulations. At one university, the fine included $3.8 million of penalties and $3.8 million of damages totaling $7.6 million that had to be returned to the federal government.

Based on the precedence set at other institutions as well as our past interactions with federal agencies, the University of Illinois at Chicago has agreed to develop and implement a more comprehensive and federally compliant effort reporting system. To this end, the Research Advisory Committee has worked over the past 18 months to develop a set of campus-wide policies that ensure federal compliance.

These policies are available at http://www.uic.edu/index.html/images/Final_Effort_IBS_CS_Policies_08-13-09.pdf

These policies are effective immediately and are applicable to all AY09 effort reports.

The UIC Office of Grants and Contracts will offer a series of education and training opportunities over the next few months to facilitate implementation of these policies, and all faculty and staff are strongly encouraged to attend. For example, see the presentation given August 19/20 to faculty and research staff.

As a matter of federal compliance, it is imperative that all faculty and staff who work with sponsored programs become familiar with these new policies and implement them for all sponsored project proposals and for all awarded sponsored projects.

For more information, see Effort Reporting at UIC.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Office of Grants and Contracts at 312-996-3373.