By Emily Klees, Financial Coordinator, Neurological Surgery
As a fairly new employee of Northwestern with two years of experience in Research Administration, I wanted to see how Grants are managed at other Universities. When I saw the announcement of the NCURA Conference, I decided this would be a great opportunity to gain an understanding of the Grant Management field. I was fortunate enough to be awarded the NURAP travel award to help support me on this journey. While attending the conference I was introduced to a completely new world. The NCURA members were unbelievably hospitable and eager to show new members the ropes. I met many great people from other institutions that I have been able to reach out to for an outsider’s opinion pertaining to issues that arise in my work.
My current position only exposes me to the post-award side but I have always wanted to learn more about pre-award. I attended a few sessions that were directed towards pre-award, which provided me with many useful tools to improve my post-award management. I believe that a good under-standing of pre-award processes greatly assists in managing the post-award side. One tool introduced to me during these sessions uses automated monthly reviews of allowable costs. This is done by creating a dictionary of key words that are associated with unallowable costs and running a report that searches for these words. The presenter’s University uses this on a large scale so they were able to purchase this software package from BakerTilly that accomplishes this. However, this could also be performed on a smaller scale using Excel.
In addition, I made a last-minute decision to attend a round table discussion on the future of grant management. This was probably my favorite session as I was with a group of people who had been in the industry for a very long time and I was able to gain some great insight. The general issues that people faced were having a difficult time of getting signatures and closing out awards. One University has a policy that if anything is not signed five days before the due date an exception request from the department chair is needed. By doing this the University cut their close out time significantly. We also discussed moving away from being paper-based and how this can potentially result in better compliance with deadlines. We also explored the amount of change grant management has seen over the years to how much it will need to adapt for younger generations that enter the field.
These constructive conversations provided me with comfort in knowing that I have picked a field that will always be around. It was an opportunity to envision how my career can advance from where I am at today. Overall, the NCURA conference was a great learning opportunity and provided me with knowledge and a network that I can draw upon for years to come. I am really looking for-ward to the next conference and am very grateful that the NURAP travel award provided me this adventure!