From Melody's Desk

Dear Colleagues,

Since his arrival in August, Vice President for Research Ram Ramasubramanian and I have been collaborating closely for additional improvements and the optimal organization for research administration. Based on our observations, industry best practices, and consultant recommendations, we are moving forward with the realignment of the Office of Sponsored Programs to report to the Vice President for Research (VPR).

For the past two years, UVAFinance has been focused on building a community from previously disparate organizations. We look forward to extending that community, that network, to the VPR.

At a recent visit, Pres-elect Ryan asked the VPs: What is one thing that doesn’t cost anything that we can do to make UVA stronger?

Answers given included: better collaboration, working across boundaries, build institutional trust. All of these are great answers, but Rick Shannon, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, summed it up most succinctly: build commitment to a common mission.

This re-alignment represents all of those thoughts. OSP will reside with the VPR, with a common alignment of the research mission, building a more cohesive, stronger research support community, and UVAFinance will continue to be part of the extended family and supporting network. We will all work together with a commitment to being valued and trusted partners, extending that foundation even beyond UVAFinance.

OSP will begin to report to the VPR this spring. Given the Post-Award Accounting Team’s emphasis on financial compliance, accounting, and financial systems, we will establish a dotted reporting line through the AVP for Finance Operations, Jerry Burke, to the Office of the Vice President for Finance. This is particularly important as the University undergoes a finance transformation, emphasizing service delivery, process improvement, and strong financial accounting systems. OSP will remain located in Carruthers Hall.

OSP has many notable achievements in its recent past, in the form of ResearchUVA, Juice, improvements in Oracle, stabilization of the pre-award queue, and much more. A number of important objectives remain as we continue to strive to have a best-in-class research administration function, and UVAFinance looks forward to working collaboratively with OSP and the VPR to see those goals become reality.