Research Staff Profiles -- Marcia Day, Jennifer Dier, John Fillio

Pre-Award Grant and Contract Administrators Provide Service

There may be no better feeling for a faculty member than getting funding for a research project. What are the factors that help make a sponsored research application successful? The pre-award team of proposal administrators in the Office of Grant and Contract Administration offer some insight. Marcia Day, Jennifer Dier and John Fillio help principal investigators (PIs) and department business managers ensure that all the "t"s are crossed and "i"s are dotted on proposal submissions, and they do it with service in mind.

Marcia, Jennifer and John work with faculty to navigate the submission process. Each is responsible for handling submissions for a specific group of funding agencies. They ensure that both sponsor and university requirements and procedures are followed. Other responsibilities include reviewing proposal budgets and submitting completed proposals. Their jobs are detail-oriented and vary on a case-by-case basis, dependent upon the type of proposal and agency to which the proposal is being submitted. They rely on a very specific knowledge base that has been acquired with experience. Jennifer comments, "Hands on experience has been by far the most important element of learning my job." John agrees, attributing much of his know-how to the expertise of all of the OGCA staff, "You can't prepare for this position; you can't take classes for it. It helps having colleagues who are so knowledgeable about the grant process and who have been doing it for so long."

While the skill set the grants and contracts administrators use on a daily basis is unique, they have found their previous experience to be useful to the job. Marcia has held her position for seven years and has been with OGCA for eight and a half. Her previous experience at UMass Amherst in the graduate records office and the Math Department helped to familiarize her with the University environment. Earning her master's in public administration at UMass Amherst also gave her an understanding of academic life. Before coming to OGCA two years ago, Jennifer held several different positions in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. There, she managed grants within the department, which has helped her appreciate the role and needs of both faculty members and department business managers. She also designed her bachelor's degree from UMass Amherst to encompass both science and business to fit her current position. John came to OGCA three and a half years ago as a temporary employee. His presence quickly showed that the office could use three full time pre-award grant and contract administrators in order to better serve the campus. As a testament to service, all three agree that previous coursework and experience with human resources and other fields that teach effective interpersonal interaction has had a positive impact on their interactions with PIs.

Research administration is a unique profession that is still coming into its own. Marcia says, "Our positions have a dual mission. We are here to help PIs get their proposals into shape and increase their chances of being funded. At the same time we have fiduciary responsibility to the university. We have to screen out language that might be problematic or identify commitments in the budget that perhaps the PI shouldn't be making. It's a delicate balance that we're constantly having to seek." John agrees and says, "I think people should be aware of our commitment and level of service. We want to help PIs and the more time we have the better service we can provide." Marcia adds, "Getting a proposal in early for review shifts our role from bad cop to good cop."

One way the administrators serve PIs is by helping them navigate the new technologies that have shifted the paper-based submission process to one that can be executed almost entirely online. They believe this change will be a positive one for PIs. "Grants.gov has made the application process smoother and more streamlined," says Jennifer. John says, "Going from hard copies to Grants.gov has been a change for the field and we have had to stay up to date on the shift." By April 2007, all federal grant applicants will be required to submit proposal applications via Grants.gov. The pre-award grant and contract administrators are working hard to make this a smooth transition for them. To that end, and with the combined expertise of John, Marcia and other staff members, OGCA has developed a series of training workshops to make the transition easier on PI's and departmental business managers. These workshops are held regularly throughout the academic year for faculty, both new and veteran, and business managers. In addition to workshops on the online submission process, OGCA also offers assistance in budget and proposal preparation via their Proposal Development Administrator.

Marcia, John and Jennifer all emphasize that the best part of their jobs is seeing faculty succeed in the grant process. Jennifer says, "It's always nice to hear about proposals that have been awarded. We don't often get a chance to follow up on proposals, so to open up the UMass webpage and see a proposal I helped a PI submit has been awarded is a good feeling."

To find out more about how the pre-award team in OGCA can help with proposal submission or to get more information about individual responsibilities within the team, visit the Proposal Contacts page of the OGCA website.