-: All right, looks like we have a good chunk of people here,
so we're gonna get started.
Just a reminder,
if everyone can turn off your cameras and mute yourself,
except for Dawn and I,
that would be great.
All right, so I'm Josh Tyack,
and with me is Dawn Caffrey
from Financial & Cost Accounting Services.
We are going to be leading this training
all about personnel effort on sponsored projects.
Before I start though,
I wanted to say that if anyone has any questions,
you can feel free to type them in the meeting chat,
and whoever's not talking between Dawn and I
can either just answer it if it's a quick question
or can jump in
and ask at a reasonable time.
Also, I will take some pauses every once in a while
just to see if anyone has questions
they would just rather say rather than type.
Also, I wanted to say that you can see
a whole list of all of the trainings we have to offer.
In particular, I want to highlight
the part two of this training series,
effort verification on sponsored projects,
which is March 14th.
So purpose of this presentation
is we're gonna give an overview of effort commitments
on sponsored projects
and focus on UVM policy
and federal rules,
and we'll talk about some practical tips
for your proposals and award administration.
And the part two is going to focus
on managing effort commitments and effort verification
on active awards.
-: And I forgot to update this slide.
So Josh just said the part two is March 14th.
So sorry about that.
This slipped our review.
So March 14th is part two.
-: All right, so I am going to get started here.
So what are effort commitments?
Basically an effort commitment is
a reasonable estimate of the time necessary
to carry out a proposed scope of work
that we have provided to a sponsor.
Now, the important,
some important things to know about this is that,
you know, the day-to-day work of research
does not mesh very well
with detailed time accounting and uniform guidance,
and so UVM policy recognizes this.
You know, even if we could do an hourly time accounting
of like each hour spent on each federal award,
even if that was a reasonable way to do this,
you know, there's no way we would ever get PIs
to actually track their time that way.
And so, as I said, sponsors understand this,
and we know that we have to really balance accuracy,
administrative burden, and flexibility.
Because if we had really detailed effort accounting,
it really wouldn't be accurate anymore,
and it would be a huge administrative burden.
So we really have to try to balance all of this.
And so as a part of that, we recognize
a certain amount of precision
in our effort policy.
So...
You know, it's recognized
that it's not gonna be 100% precise.
There's going to be some...
There's going to be some,
you know, give and take,
and there's going to be
a little bit of fluctuation expected.
So at UVM,
our level of precision is that we expect
that people are within 5%
of what their actual effort would be
in their effort commitments and effort reporting,
and that this can fluctuate.
So, you know, if we've charged 10% effort to a grant
but effort fluctuated between like 8% and 12%
over a three-month period,
we're within that 5%,
and so that would be totally, you know, okay here.
-: Yeah, the distinction here
is still that it needs,
it does need to be accurate,
but we allow that fluctuation and flexibility
within what the government considers long-term,
a three month period.
So in our example, you're still within-
So you're charging 10%.
You're up some months, down some months,
but the 10% is still accurate.
If over that three-month period
the average was 12,
in that case, the second statement below
still requires in that case
that you would make that adjustment.
Even though it's within that 5%,
it's no longer accurate for that three-month period.
So you kind of have to take two,
both things and consider them.
Am I accurately charging the sponsor
for the total effort for this quarter of the year?
Yes, okay, then the fluctuations don't need to be submitted
for distribution changes for every two weeks or such
or every month.
So if you have any questions on that, please let us know.
-: But and also that's a good advertisement
for the part two training too,
where we all, we do get very much into the weeds
of some of the issues with effort commitment.
-: Absolutely.
-: All right, so where are the rules coming from
that we're going to be talking about?
Where, like what are we guided by?
The first thing is we're guided by UVM internal policy,
and this is really distilled in a policy document
called Effort Management
and Reporting on Sponsored Agreements.
And it's on the Cost Accounting website,
wheeling to it on the SPA website,
and this is something that everyone should be familiar with
who deals with sponsored projects.
And our policy is based around uniform guidance
as sort of a minimum standard,
but there is a lot of gray areas and baselines
that we expand upon
and sort of treat how we want to be treated.
Also, our policy will include Vermont state rules and laws
and faculty contract issues.
For example, there's a lot of prohibitions.
There are prohibitions on UVM employees
acting as consultants on UVM awards,
you know, paid, being paid as consultants
on a UVM sponsored project.
And so that comes from Vermont state law,
faculty contract, things like that,
not from uniform guidance, per se.
The next level is with federally funded awards,
we're looking at uniform guidance,
again, which is what our policy is based on,
or FAR clauses which are,
which govern contracts rather than grants.
But the majority of work, federal work we do
is governed by uniform guidance, not the FAR clauses,
and honestly the parts of the FAR clauses
that we would mostly see
sort of mostly mirror uniform guidance here.
And then you'd be looking,
and then we will look at agency-specific rules.
So these would be in like an agency's proposal guidelines
or a grant's policy statements.
And these will have specifics
for how agencies want to look at effort commitments.
And then there may be funding specific rules,
like a rule specific to a certain FOA that might say,
for example, an NIH mentored or training award
will often have a minimum effort requirement.
So like the person receiving
a mentored award, a K award
may have to put on
nine person months a year on the award
or something like that.
So non-federal awards,
we are going to be really mostly focusing
on federal awards here.
But the important thing for a non-federal award
is that they may have their own specific rules
about things that they want to see in terms of effort,
like a minimum effort requirement,
or how they want effort reported,
but if there's no agency-specific rules,
then we just revert back to UVM internal policy.
And so at a minimum, even if a spon-
Even if a non-federal sponsor has no rules governing effort,
we're still going to be held to our UVM effort policy.
All right, so where are effort commitments found?
What is very important is that an effort commitment
is always going to be found in a proposal or an award,
and it should be clearly described
in the proposal or the award.
If there is no effort committed to the sponsor
in the proposal or the award,
there is no effort commitment
that UVM has made to a sponsor.
However, even if we have not made
an effort commitment to a sponsor,
we are still following
our UVM effort commitment policies,
and so things like a minimum effort rule
will still, you know, be there,
but there was no effort commitment
that we have made to the sponsor that we are being held to.
Now, whose effort commitments
are people looking at,
does the sponsor care about?
So the sponsor's looking at key effort commitments,
and in particular,
most sponsors are looking at just the PD/PI,
or for NIH, a multiple PI,
so if you have multiple PD/PIs.
Some sponsors also will look at co-PD/PIs.
For example, NSF, NIFA, and NASA
will look at an identified co-PD/PI.
And then if the sponsor has named
anyone specific in the award
as someone whose effort is being,
you know, tracked and controlled
for effort commitment purposes,
then we would also look at that.
So we often see that with NIH, for example,
on like COBRE awards.
They will list the research project leader
as someone who is not a PD/PI
of the overall COBRE award,
but whose effort we have to,
like meets the effort commitment
and, you know, all the sort of the rules that we have
in terms of maintaining effort that's committed.
And I happen to have the chat open.
I see Julia's asking a question.
That is a good question.
So oftentimes what happens is that
we are going to propose to a sponsor that someone is key,
but we'll call someone a co-investigator.
So they're key in terms of the proposal
that we're submitting to the sponsor,
in terms of saying, like, this person is key
for conducting the work,
they're committing two person months or whatever,
and, you know, that meets the rules and requirements
around a key personnel for that specific sponsor.
And so, you know, NIH will then include their biosketch
and et cetera, et cetera.
But when it comes to actually doing the award,
NIH will just not care about those people's effort
in terms of the same sort of effort commitment rules
that they would for a PD/PI on the award.
And that is...
That is not to say that those people's effort
isn't important,
and we are tracking those people's effort.
We are tracking their effort commitments.
But for the purposes of things like prior approval requests
or like, you know, maintaining certain levels of effort,
NIH, to use this example, has stated
that they only care about the named PD/PI
or multiple PD/PIs
and then any named person in the award document
that they've explicitly said,
you know, this person's effort change also require,
you know, prior approval, things like that.
And so really a big piece of it is just that
there are sort of,
most sponsors just have different ways
of thinking about reviewing a proposal
versus administering the award.
And also there have been times
when we've listed someone as a co-investigator,
but a sponsor has like,
has given them a promotion and said,
actually, no, for the award administrative purposes,
we are caring about this person's effort commitments
the same way we would the named PD/PI.
So that can also happen.
But it's most common
that we would just list someone as a co-investigator,
and then when it comes time to administer the award,
the sponsor is not looking at their effort commitments
in the same way that like a named PD/PI is,
and certainly that's the case for NIH.
But again, we're still tracking
these people's effort commitments
that we've made to the sponsor.
-: So Josh, you had a follow-up question.
Is this affected as well if we were a sub-award?
-: Yeah, the rules are the same in terms of,
if we're a sub-award,
the same sort of rules that would govern the prime award
flow down to us.
And so we would be...
You know, let's say our sub-award has
one person named as our sub-award PI
and two co-investigators.
Well, the lead institution
will be flowing down those same terms to us,
and now it's possible that the overall NIH award document
may have some of those people that we have on our proposal
listed as multiple PIs or as people who need to be,
have their effort tracked in different ways.
If that was the case,
then the lead institution would flow that down to us
and tell us that.
But for the most part,
we would then just be following the same sorts of rules
if this were an NIH prime
as if we were an NIH sub-award.
So the sponsor rules are the same.
Like we're following the same terms and conditions
if it's a flow-through
versus we're the prime recipient.
All right, so now we're talking about
minimum PI effort requirements,
and this is a part of the UVM effort policy.
Technically, uniform guidance does not have
a minimum PI requirement.
They just sort of imply that effort would be required,
and it would be really impossible
to be a PI on a normal research grant
without having some sort of measurable effort.
And so because of that,
UVM and like basically every other research university
has at least some minimum effort requirements
for most of their sponsored projects.
And our minimum effort is a 1% minimum effort
over the budget period,
and that is not a 1% minimum effort
just for the sort of active work periods,
so like unless the award is only three months long,
just for the summer.
If the award is a 12-month award,
the average over the course of that 12 months
has to be 1% even if all the work happens in the summer.
So in those cases, it wouldn't just be 1% in the summer.
It would be more than that
in order for the entire average
to average out as 1% minimum.
And...
But it is important though that we should be reflecting
when the work is actually performed, right?
So if you're doing work in the summer,
there should be effort in the summer.
If you're doing work in the academic year,
there should be effort in the academic year.
Also this is not required to be cost shared.
Sometimes people will say,
oh, that required 1% cost shared effort.
Like no, you should request sponsored funds for your effort
absent some very specific circumstances.
Sometimes a sponsor says that they won't fund PI effort,
but we'll still have to have
a minimum PI effort on that proposal,
and so in those cases, it would have to be cost shared.
Other times the budgets are just small enough
that it would be prohibitive
to have PI effort charged to the sponsor.
But it doesn't have to be cost shared.
That's sort of a misnomer
that pops up every once in a while.
So we can request a waiver of that PI effort.
And the most common times you would see this would be,
like we're requesting money
that funds a sort of shared scope of work that is-
Like let's say a director of a program
receives a lot of money from one funding source
and then also gets some money
from a few other funding sources.
Well, the scopes of work are basically fully in line,
and that director's salary is more or less covered
by one sponsored project already.
Like that would be a good argument
that to sort of receive some of these other funding sources
are still a part of that overall scope of work that is,
that the PI already has funding for.
-: And there are some award types in our effort policy
that already are excluded from that.
So we didn't list that here,
but anybody who's new to this administrative role,
I mean, there's equipment instrumentation grants,
doctoral dissertation grants,
student augmentation grants. -: Yeah, supplements.
-: So there's travel. -: Clinical trial, yeah.
-: So you want to be familiar with the effort policy
to know which ones you don't need to request
that 1% waiver for.
-: Exactly, yeah, so, I mean,
granted there are some equipment grants that require effort,
but in general an equipment grant doesn't need PI effort
or a supplement doesn't need PI effort,
things like that.
And oftentimes the logic is similar to a situation
where we would need to request an effort
or a waiver of the PI minimum effort policy.
So if you're supplementing an award
that we've already received funding for,
it's a similar idea.
If you're saying, well, I've received this funding
from this overall work I'm doing from one sponsor
and we're sort of adding a few small projects to that
from this other sponsor,
the work is still, you know,
it's like almost a combined scope of work.
But again, if- -: In a typical one with that,
like, so if you get a supplement from a sub-award,
they often will put it in as its own, a new award number,
and so you're really having two awards for the same scope
or two pots of money under two different sub-awards
that are for the same body of work.
And so that's when it makes sense to reach out to us
and say, "This is the same body of work.
It's just additional funding,
I'm not gonna have my effort shown in both awards
'cause it's all captured here."
And so we'd have that discussion
and approve that and put it on our tracker.
So sub-awards are typically where you see this.
If you get supplemental money for like an NIH award,
that's gonna be under the same award
and just get set up as an additional project,
and in that case, you don't need,
like SPA won't even require
that you get that approval from us.
So it's all depending on the situation.
-: Yeah, so if you're putting,
and again, as Dawn said,
familiarize yourself with that list
of proposal types or award types
that are exceptions to the minimum effort policy.
But the...
But just to say, if you're doing an equipment grant
or supplements, student application,
student augmentation grants,
we're just never going to require you
to have that minimum effort.
So we'll see that that's what the award is for.
There's a question about budget bumps.
So if we're talking about clinical trial,
there is a clinical trial exception
to the minimum effort policy.
In general, I should say the clinical trial exception
is a bit...
It's a bit of a gray area.
All that to be said,
if the PI is actively working on a clinical trial,
they're expected to put effort
on that clinical trial in general.
Like generally speaking,
if you're doing like a research project
with a clinical trial component
and there's active work happening,
we expect that PI to be doing work.
But a lot of clinical trials,
that's sort of not practical based on how they work,
and, you know, you're enrolling a patient here or there,
and you're adding them to the clinical trial.
And so there is an exception for that sort of circumstance.
-: Yeah, there's a whole section on that
and basically the PI effort.
So I'm gonna read directly from the effort policy,
one statement of it, just to clarify,
but "PI effort on clinical trials
is not required for those budget periods
where there is no activity on the study
and procedures on patients have not been performed."
So if there is activity on the study
and there are patients enrolled,
the appropriate amount of effort is required
to be reflected on that.
-: Yeah, but also it just,
a budget bump-oriented clinical trial
is often a complicated set of circumstances.
And so, yeah, we definitely recognize that,
and so it ends up being,
you know, a bit of a complicated situation
in terms of budgeting.
But, you know, any time you're working on a clinical trial
that's set up that way,
reach out to your SPA RA, your Central Office RA,
and we can sort of give you some guidance
about the best way to set up the funding proposal
to show the necessary effort
if there is necessary effort.
On all...
Let me back up.
There's a few sort of big concepts about effort commitment
and effort on sponsored projects
that are really important to go over,
and the first big concept that really governs
how effort commitment works
is institutional base salary.
This is really the basis
for all of our effort commitment and reporting.
And this is, you know,
a individual, an employee's annual salary
as set by UVM
or UVM in concert with UVMMC,
if you're a doctor at the hospital,
for that employee's regular appointment
as well as payments
for any sort of ongoing administrative duties
if that's a part of your job,
like your job at UVM.
And that's regardless of how those administrative,
you know, those added duties are paid.
So it's basically everything
that's within someone's appointment
that they're expected and contracted to work.
This wouldn't exclude,
for example, like temporary salary
for work outside of an employee's regular appointment.
For example, if someone's doing course overload.
If they're teaching an extra course
or they're teaching summer classes,
those added pays are outside
of someone's contracted workload,
and so that is outside of someone's IBS.
IBS is always normalized
to a 1.0 FTE
at whatever appointment an employee has.
So if it's a 12-month appointment or a 9-month appointment,
it's normalized to a 1.0 FTE.
So even if someone is
a half-time employee
or they work, you know, they're soft-funded,
and so they're, you know,
we have our .745 FTE soft-funded at this point.
Their institutional base salary
is the normalized 1.0 FTE amount
that they would make if they worked at 1.0 FTE.
And as we said, this includes administrative
or chair or director-type duties.
So for example,
let's say you have a PI and they have,
they're a professor and they're also a chair.
Like they're the chair of a department.
They're a professor.
Let's say they're gonna have a professor appointment,
and they're gonna have a chair appointment.
Let's say their professor appointment has a rate of pay
of $100,000 a year if they were a 1.0 FTE.
And let's say their chair appointment
would have a rate of pay of $200,000 per year,
again, if they were a 1.0 FTE.
So let's say it's half-time at each appointment.
That person's IBS would be $150,000 a year
'cause they're taking into account
their professor appointment and their chair appointment,
and it's a combination of the both.
And so again, in this specific case,
that IBS would be $150,000 a year.
So we cannot increase someone's IBS
to replace UVM funds with sponsored project funds.
So like let's say someone's a professor and they make,
their IBS is $100,000 a year,
and they get a new grant that brings in a bunch of money,
including some of their salary money.
We can't just like add their salary money
on top of their IBS,
their current IBS that we propose
and say, "Okay, great, you brought in $50,000 in salary.
You get that on top of your old rate of pay."
The IBS of an employee
basically can't just be increased
because they've received more sponsored project funds
or other revenue, things like that.
It is, you know, if someone has a promotion
during the course of the year,
yes, their IBS can change.
Otherwise it would change as a result of the standard,
you know, rate of pay increases
that happen every fiscal year.
And very crucially, we just cannot
pay someone above their 1.0 FTE
of their IBS.
So...
Technically speaking,
there are very incredibly limited circumstances
that would allow someone to receive
more than 1.0 pay of their IBS,
and again, we're not talking about
course overload or things like that
'cause that happens outside of your IBS.
But sponsored project funds in excess of one,
so that you would be receiving over 1.0 FTE.
I've done that once in my entire time here.
I've successfully done it once.
It's incredibly rare and just not something ever worth doing
or even trying to do it.
Just, it won't happen.
Don't do it.
Donna has a excellent question
about distributing someone with two appointments
when effort is applied.
And...
I don't, I know that there are ways that people handle this,
but for the purposes of this training,
all that matters is that you are putting someone
on a sponsored project proposal
with their IBS,
and their IBS will take into account
both their professor appointment and their chair
or other administrative whatever jobs,
even if we will be distributing someone
only to their professor appointment
for the research work they're doing,
or the other way around, I guess, technically.
That would be a weird circumstance though,
with a chair, for example.
And so,
yes, it can get,
I know it can get complicated.
I believe there are some best practices for this,
but for the purposes of this training,
what's really important to know is that
if someone has more than one appointment,
their IBS has to take those appointments into account,
and we have to include that IBS
on our sponsored project proposal.
And that's how our effort commitments will be,
that's how we will hold our effort commitments.
-: Yeah, and effort policy clearly defines that,
and I just put that kind of statement in there,
that the institutional base salary of an individual
shall be used for estimating, accumulating,
and reporting salary charges to sponsored agreements.
And the effort policy does acknowledge
that the definition of institutional base salary
may not be the same
as salary definitions used elsewhere at the university,
specifically the collective bargaining agreement.
Because when you look at effort reporting
and you're doing your effort certifications in ERS
at the end of the year,
we are taking into account, for instance,
those director appointments
that are done through additional pays.
And that is part of the IBS
in terms of effort reporting
and should be accounted for
when proposing your effort.
Because if you enter,
if you're only taking into account the faculty salary
and you make a proposal based on,
you know, 10% of what that faculty salary is
and you have these other rates of pay
that are effectively
the total IBS of a 1.0 individual,
then you aren't going to come out.
So say you have 10% is what you committed
for just using the faculty salary.
When you factor in what the true IBS is,
it's not going to be reflective of the correct,
of the 10% when you bring that in.
And so there are tools in ERS
that you can look at throughout the year
that we'll go over
in part two of the training in March
to see that on an ongoing basis
and be able to make any updates necessary
to salary distributions
to accommodate those different rates of pay
and how it impacts the effort reporting.
-: Yeah, and honestly, the example I'm giving here
is like not that extreme
in terms of the differences in rates of pay.
You could have like a doctor
who has a joint appointment at the College of Medicine,
and let's say they spend 40% or 50% of their time
at the College of Medicine as a professor.
Well, that rate of pay is, let's say, 120,000 a year,
$140,000 a year based on the like contracted rate of pay
for a, you know, associate professor in LCOM.
Well, if they're like an anesthesiologist,
they may make $500,000 a year at the hospital, right?
So that's their,
other half of their time
comes from their hospital rate of pay.
And so that's a massive difference, right?
And so you, and so in those cases,
our IBS has to take into account their clinical pay
and their pay as a professor.
And...
But when it comes to actually,
you know, making,
you know, tracking those effort commitments,
we still have to use that institutional base salary
that combines both of those.
All right, now IBS and appointment type.
So...
Most faculty at UVM are either 12-month or 9-month faculty.
12-month faculty, you know, it's set.
There shouldn't be a big question here.
But with nine-month faculty, that IBS that is set
is based on their nine-month appointment time.
But they obviously, most faculty with nine-month appointment
that work sponsored projects
do a lot of their sponsored project work in the summer.
And so what ends up happening is that,
I mean, there's sort of various ways of thinking about this,
but the easiest way I think about it
is to think that their summer appoint,
their summertime is sort of its own standalone appointment
based on an IBS that is like the rate of pay
of their nine-month appointment.
So like legitimately you can just divide
their nine-month appointment,
their nine-month IBS by three
and find their summer institutional base salary.
Now, it's actually a lot more complicated
when you're talking about like
various ways of thinking about it in reality
or in different ways of handling it,
but I just find that that's a good way to,
that's how I like to think about it in terms of like,
you know, getting the dollars set and so.
But it's important to note
that that IBS that you're receiving in the summer
is based on your appointment,
your academic appointment IBS,
and in fact, it's actually based on the,
your institutional base salary
for the prior contract period.
So it would be based on the IBS you received
in that previous academic year.
That faculty member,
their salary won't increase until like,
until the next semester starts,
even though for 12-month employees,
their salary ups in the,
when the fiscal year turns over.
Now, one really important thing
to note for summer effort is that
you cannot charge summer effort
unless you did that work during the summer.
If you were to do something
like work on your sponsored project
during the academic year,
and, but like you said,
"Oh, well, I requested summer effort,
and so there's money in the budget.
I may have done some of this work,
or I did this work during the academic period,
but I'm still gonna request.
Like I'll say I did,
I'll put that effort commitment down in the summer,"
so you get extra money
on top of your contracted nine-month salary,
that's fraud.
Like that's legitimately defrauding the federal government,
and people will get into major trouble for that.
Like you can be disbarred, you can lose your job,
you can technically go to prison.
I don't know if I've ever heard
a PI going to prison for that.
And this is something that-
-: But the university would also get charged.
Be fined millions of dollars
usually is where the penalties are,
and they're pretty significant
when those findings are found.
-: And this is the kind of thing
that like just legitimately used to happen
as a matter of course in like the history of academia.
You know, you have like,
you might have plenty of old-school PIs
where this was just like something that happened
and no one talked about.
Well, that's not the case anymore.
People talk about it, people look at it, people audit you,
and you will get into serious trouble.
And, you know, there are times when someone's like,
"Oh yeah, I did this work,"
but it's literally physically impossible
for them to have done the work
that they said that they were doing, you know.
And so...
It's a big no-no.
You receive summer salary support
for doing that work in the summer,
and anything else is
a massive no-no.
Also, vacation time is not paid time
during summer salary pay.
Like you can't say,
like, oh, I'm gonna take my two-week vacation
and say that you're working one person month in the summer,
but like two weeks of that was a vacation time.
Like that is not,
that's not how our benefits accrue
and how we're allowed to do things.
So when you're doing your UVMClick funding proposal,
an employee's current institutional base salary
will automatically be pulled into that funding proposal
for most employees.
So this should be accurate for most employees.
There are a few circumstances
where things can get a little bit weird.
Now one is if someone is paid as a director
using additional pay,
and in this case, the additional pay is not tracked
as a part of someone's official appointment type
in PeopleSoft,
and so you have to manually change
that institutional base salary to reflect that.
Another thing that can happen is,
you know, during...
There's always like a period around like June-July
when you have new salary info coming in
for people who are soft-funded
but perhaps the amount they're working
is changing a little bit and there's,
but it hasn't been updated yet based on their actual salary.
And so like someone could be,
plan to be on,
you know, working .8 instead of .75,
and their new rate of pay will go into PeopleSoft
as that .8 period,
but the effort,
the appointment FTE won't be updated right away.
And so that will mess up
how the institutional base salary is calculated
when it pulls into Click.
But it's pretty limited,
and it's sort of a...
It's like a short period where this happens.
And then also obviously
if you know someone is going to get
like a change in appointment type,
if someone's, or if someone's gonna have
like a promotion or they're gonna be made a chair
or they're stepping down from their chair role
or they're on,
they're like away from the university or whatever it is,
and so what's important to note then is that
if the IBS does not look correct,
then we need to manually update it.
And if you are very certain you know the answer
to what someone's IBS should be,
then make that change.
But if there's any question,
like if something doesn't look right to you
and you're sort of not sure,
doesn't really seem to match how you're thinking about it,
I would really suggest reaching out
to your SPA RA pretty quickly
and we can help work through,
we can help work through what their IBS should actually be.
Because what we don't want you to do
is make an assumption that's wrong,
especially if you think,
really especially if you think that the IBS is too high.
We don't want you to make an assumption that's wrong,
and then we're looking through it,
and all of a sudden everything mismatches
because like honestly we trust what's there
as something that was pulled through accurately.
So if there's really any question,
reach out early to your Central Office RA.
And then the...
As I mentioned before,
the IBS for nine-month faculty,
it flows into UVMClick right now
as that nine-month IBS.
And then if you want to put someone on the summer,
you have to switch it to their three-month base salary
in the system.
And I think the easiest way to do that
is to divide the number that flows into Click by three
and then put that down.
There's going to be some changes to how
UVMClick budgets
things with effort commitments and base salaries.
However, we are starting that testing like today. (laughs)
And so I haven't fully assessed
exactly how it will work yet,
but some of this may change a little bit
in terms of how nine-month faculty are put in the budget.
-: Josh, just because this is being recorded
and I might post the newer version
and the chat doesn't get seen,
I don't think, in the recordings,
but so we did have a good question.
It was, do PIs need to change their,
or do PIs need to charge their summer salary
in the summer month they actually worked?
I know HR allows their pay
to be spread throughout the summer.
So I'm not sure what exactly you mean
by HR allowing them to spread it.
HR doesn't really know when the effort was worked,
so they're gonna let the salary,
the additional pays go through,
assuming that it's accurate
of when the effort was actually worked.
But there are effort dates
in the additional pay form,
and so those need to accurately reflect
when the effort was being worked.
So if somebody has an award where they have put in
for one summer month of salary on the award,
they need to reflect
when that was actually work and pay it out.
So if they worked on it the entire summer,
typically you do a third, a third, a third
if they're working on it consistently and evenly
throughout the summer.
If they truly are,
"Okay, my season for this is early summer.
I'm working all of my effort for the month of June
100% on this one award,"
it should all be in that one month.
I do see a lot of times where it is all in one month,
and I kind of question that.
I mean, it just feels like typically
they're working on it more consistently.
It's not just a cram it in, get it done on this one.
So you really want to be accurate
in when they are going to work on it
and not just trying to,
well, they said they were gonna do three summer months,
and so we need to fit it in.
And I also, honestly, I question
when there's three summer months,
'cause, again, as we said earlier,
vacation time is not allowed to be paid in the summer pay.
We're not, it's non-contract time,
so they're not getting
the typical benefits of their contract.
So they aren't entitled
to vacation pay paid out as an additional pay.
That is actual effort work.
So if you have somebody putting in
for three summer months of full effort,
you want to remind them,
if you're taking vacation, you can't do three summer months.
And so it is kind of helpful
to have that conversation with them
'cause they may not always understand that distinction
that it is different from contract times.
-: Thank you, that's a really good point,
and yeah, the working three summer months is,
I would say a red flag for sure.
-: Mm-hmm.
-: But again, we're talking about nine-month faculty here
just in case anyone has any questions.
If you're 12-month faculty, take your summer vacation.
That's fine, that's contracted time for you.
You're allowed to use your vacation time then
and still have effort commitments going on
sort of within the standard rules we have for all that.
All right, so the next big overarching,
you know, theory, whatever, process for effort commitments
is person months.
So (coughs) person months is,
this is how we are going to be proposing
and reporting
our effort commitments for almost every federal sponsor.
And really what this is
is this is the number of months or portions of a month
an investigator is working on an award
in each increment of award.
And this is really important
to familiarize yourself with.
This is a set constant value.
A month is a month.
A person month, so a person month is a person month.
There's no like .8 person.
Like I'm a .8 faculty member,
so my person months are different.
No, like there's no summer person.
There's, it's...
A month is a month, has the same...
I mean, technically months have different numbers of days,
but in terms of a person month,
there's 12 of them in a year.
It has a set value,
and so it does not change based on appointment type,
FTE, or award length.
And this is important because this gives us a,
along with IBS, it gives us a consistent baseline
to look at effort commitments.
You know, you can compare like to like,
'cause federal sponsor can compare
like effort commitments when they're looking at something.
You don't have to have like a policy document
on every proposal you submit
that says, well, actually we have, you know, .2% effort,
but that's based on this person's short-time period.
You know, it's-
No, a person month is a person month
consistently across the country for each,
any entity that submits to a federal sponsor
and each federal agency that's looking at it.
It's a consistent baseline to look at these commitments.
So as a part of this,
you know, let's say if an award is six months long,
the most number of person months you can commit
is six person months.
Because if you're only,
if you only have six months to work with,
you can only commit six months to it.
Similarly, if a PI is only working in the summer,
in their summer appointment,
only three person months can be committed.
Even though technically as we just said,
like if someone actually commits
three person months in the summer,
that's a bit of a red flag,
but they have up to three person months
that they could put on a sponsored project in that period.
So again, we're looking at,
everything can be compared with a consistent denominator.
Depending, you know, if you're a nine-month faculty,
if you're 12-month faculty, if you're 1.0 FTE,
if you're .5 FTE, whatever it is,
everyone shows commitments in the same way
and can have commitments reviewed by the sponsor
in the same way.
You could calculate
your yearly person months committed
by dividing your total salary distributions on an award
by your IBS,
obviously taking into account
if you have, you know, summer versus academic,
but for 12-month faculty,
that's a very easy specific calculation to make.
And so that's literally a way to back-calculate.
If you want to know how many person months
you were paid on this award,
you can do that.
So this has a lot of downstream implications too
in terms of how we look at our commitments
based on the award period.
So in general, we're making effort commitments
based on a set number of person months
in each award increment.
It's not a marginal percent effort.
So if you've committed 1.2 person months
in your proposal per year, in a year,
which is the same thing as saying 10% FTE
for a 1.0 FTE if they're a 12-month faculty,
that effort commitment is 1.2 person months
over the course of the year,
not 10% every month for a year.
So sometimes we may have a departmental administrator
or a PI who says like, "Oh, you know, this month I,
Like next month my effort is gonna dip down to,
we have a 2% instead of 10%.
Like do I need anything from the sponsor?"
Well, no, it's,
we're taking everything over the course of that period,
and we're looking at person months,
not marginal percent effort.
And the effort allocations,
they should reflect the work that you're performing.
So like let's say you are, just on the award,
you know, you are working 5% for the first six months
and 15% for the following six months.
That would be 1.2 person months for that increment.
So you've met that effort commitment based on that proposal,
that one-year award increment.
-: So Josh, there is a question.
It was when calculating person months,
is it relevant that IBS can change mid-grant here?
Do you want to take that or?
-: Yeah, I mean, here-
-: It's all gonna be relative, right?
So it's- -: Yeah.
(Dawn laughing)
So here we get, this is actually,
I think this is some of the kind of thing
we'll be talking about, if I recall,
in the part two of the training,
'cause we're sort of getting a bit into the weeds
in terms of like how our effort commitment system works
versus doing submitting the proposal.
So the commitment is based on
the dollars that we have on the IBS on our proposal, right?
So let's say someone makes $100,000 a year.
We're putting 1.2 person months on that grant.
That's $10,000 in salary.
If in the middle of that grant year,
that person's now making $110,000 a year,
we're still expected to meet that 1.2 person months.
And so, yes, the amount of salary
that we would be expecting to encumber on that grant
would go up
in order to meet that same person month commitment.
Dawn, how was that in terms of broad overview?
-: So like it's either,
so it's 1/12 of your year
at whatever pay you earn,
so your salary distribution so wouldn't change.
I mean, it's a hard concept to explain,
but like, yeah, just because you're getting more
because our annual increases,
your commitment doesn't change.
You still have sliced your 12 months up
of how you're gonna work that,
and if it's one month of effort,
it just, it's still one month of effort
regardless of what your IBS is.
It's just more will go towards the awards,
and those are generally tried to be built
into multiple-year awards anyways
as best we can for prediction-wise and...
It's just a matter,
like if your IBS changes mid-year
because you've had a mid-year change in duties,
and in that case, you do need to look at
what your other commitments are
and evaluate whether or not,
because of this new role and new commitment for that,
do you still have, are you now over-committed?
And in that case, that IBS changed
because there's a change of job duties.
Then you might need to evaluate
whether or not a reduction is required.
But if it's just the standard annual increase each year,
it won't have that impact
other than the grants being charged more,
your department being charged more.
-: Sorry, yeah, in terms of that formula, I said yes.
That won't be acc-
I was just sort of, I think, trying to illustrate the point
of like what a person month is.
But yes, technically speaking, as IBS changes,
that formula I have in terms
of like total salary paid from an award divided by IBS
will not be actually accurate as people's IBS change.
-: Okay.
-: Sherry's question has,
asked a question about,
sort of relates to absences
and we actually do get to that in a little bit.
So just hold tight,
and we will talk a little bit about
some of the issues related
to like not putting effort on a grant for a period of time.
So I'm gonna keep going here.
You know, talking about award periods,
again, these commitments are made
based on the awarded period.
So if we have a multi-year award,
that means that the effort commitment is made
on that cumulative amount of the multi-year.
So it ends up being the sum of all the person months
in the award period.
So...
For example, let's say we have a PI on an NSF award,
who, in the proposal, we are including
two person months a year for three years.
NSF on almost all of their awards
awards that cumulatively,
so they award us a three-year award.
That award has a effort commitment
of six person months over three years.
It's not, again, a marginal,
it's not a marginal effort commitment.
It's an effort commitment over the awarded increment.
And so the PI has three years to fulfill that commitment,
so long as they're not absent from their role as PI.
Like they can't...
They can't sort of not serve as PI for a year
or six months or whatever,
but they have that entire award period
to meet that cumulative award commitment.
And this is the case for most every federal sponsor
that awards things cumulatively.
I mean, I think sometimes there may be random sponsors,
smaller agencies here or there
that have, you know, more eccentric ways of doing things.
But for our main sponsors that award things,
that award multi-year awards together,
like NSF, NIFA, agencies like that,
that's the case for how they treat effort.
Now we also want to make sure
that the budget and budget justification
have language that supports its flexibility.
So if you say...
If you say on your budget justification,
I'm gonna work 10% every year,
that doesn't give us that flexibility
because you're making a commitment to work 10% every year
or 10% a month or whatever that is.
Whatever thing you are saying that's not two person months
gives us less flexibility
and 'cause we are always gonna hold you
to the effort commitment you made to the sponsor
even if you made a greater effort commitment
than what was required.
And so that leads to some of our tips here.
So one big tip
and something that we always want to say and reiterate
is that you should always be providing effort commitments
in person months
unless a sponsor explicitly asks you to provide another way.
So some sponsors will explicitly say,
give us this effort in percent effort or FTE.
Every once in a while, you'll have a sponsor
that wants it in hours worked or something more annoying.
But so long as they don't explicitly ask
for effort to be done a different way,
always provide your effort commitments in person months,
and only give person months.
Every once in a while,
I mean, this is sort of like
an older school way of doing it,
you may have a PI who says,
"Oh, 1.2 person months.
In parentheses, 10% effort."
No, that's not,
not only is it not necessary,
it adds complication to this.
It literally, it adds zero to your proposal,
and it adds nothing positive, I should say,
and just adds complicating factors.
And...
So yes, always person months. (laughs)
That's something I cannot reiterate enough.
For really all of our federally funded proposals,
we really want to clearly and consistently provide
our effort commitments.
Because we know these federal agencies
have effort commitment requirements
and we are going to be held to them,
we should provide our effort commitments
clearly and consistently.
Don't provide, like, you know,
someone may have a proposal going in
where, again, they're saying,
"Oh, I'm gonna do 1.2 person months or 10% effort
or, you know, 2,000 hours."
Like no, no, no.
One, provide the effort in one way,
and that one way is in person months,
and don't complicate it.
We also want to provide
the federal budget forms whenever possible.
So every once in a while,
you'll have a federal sponsor even
that says like, "Oh, just send us a budget.
You know, we don't, we're not requiring a certain form."
Or maybe we're a sub-award and our prime just says,
"Oh yeah, just send us a budget.
We don't really care."
We should, if it's federal money,
we should be providing a federal budget form to them,
and, in fact, UVMClick can generate
a R&R budget form automatically.
So you don't even have to enter anything into a budget form.
It just does it automatically for you.
And so really whenever possible,
we should be sending our sponsor,
we should be, you know,
we should be providing them a federal budget form
any time it's a federal sponsor.
And then in your budget justification,
be vague but be clear, (laughs)
if this makes sense.
But the idea is like don't provide too much detail.
Don't say I'm gonna work 10%
between May and June of every year.
Like that's way too much.
Don't say like, I may do this or I may do that,
and maybe this is 10 hours or, you know.
Be very clear but be as vague as possible.
Say like, you know, I will be doing this,
you know, this and this and this work.
You know, we are committing,
you know, we expect it to be,
you know, one person month,
you know, each year for the life of the grant or something
or for three years
for a total effort commitment
of three person months over three years.
Something like that.
So it doesn't have to be,
like, be very clear but be,
but provide the least detail possible
in terms of when you're getting into
like the detail of how much effort you're committing.
-: Like auditor rules.
They don't ask, don't provide it. (laughs)
-: Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get to that, don't worry.
But I will say,
if we do know that we are working a very specific season
and that's like really important,
you can say that.
You can say like, the growing season for this
is we anticipate between this and this period.
You know, we think we'll be doing all of our work
in that period.
That can simplify things down the line at times.
And again, cumulative justification
if we are expecting to receive a cumulative award.
You know, the language here I have
is six person months total
with two person months anticipated per year.
That's totally fine, that works.
There's other ways of phrasing it,
but we just sort of want to make sure
that people are thinking cumulatively
when we're writing our budget justifications.
And then here's another important thing.
Only provide the information requested.
If a sponsor does not require,
does not request our effort commitments,
don't provide one.
So sometimes this is the case
with a state contract or grant.
The state doesn't need to see this.
They're not asking for effort.
They just want to see,
maybe they just want to see
a budget broken out by total personnel costs
and fringe and whatever,
but they don't need to see an effort commitment
from each person that's working on the grant.
Or they don't need to see a budget at all.
Oftentimes, like if we're doing a fixed price thing,
we don't, we shouldn't need to provide them a budget.
So if a sponsor is not explicitly asking us
to provide an effort commitment,
just don't give them an effort commitment.
Don't include one.
Oftentimes, people have that as sort of a knee-jerk,
like, well, obviously I have to do this and this and this.
Well, you know, yes, if this was an NIH grant, you would.
But like this is a random
Department of Health and Human Service,
you know, Agency of Health contract we're doing,
and they don't need to see our effort commitments
that we're going to be making on this.
And so if they don't, they aren't asking for it,
don't include it.
However, just to be clear,
the budget request should still include personnel costs.
Like we're not saying don't include personnel costs
in your budget that you're submitting to them.
You know, the Click funding proposal
will have personnel costs,
and it will have effort commitments,
and we will set those effort commitments up.
But they're...
But the idea, and those effort,
the effort that it goes on that budget
should still reflect the amount of work
necessary to complete scope of work.
All we're saying is that don't actually show that level of,
you don't need to show the detail
of how you got to those budget numbers
if the sponsor isn't requesting it.
And really I would say it's pretty common
for a non-federal sponsor
to not actually need that level of detail.
Sometimes they just want like
budget costs broken out by dollar amounts.
Maybe it's by cost categories.
Maybe it's a milestone-based budget.
So it has nothing to do with effort
or how we'll actually be spending the money.
It's based on milestones or something like that.
Now when we are talking about no-cost extensions,
there's also some effort pieces going along with that.
So different sponsors have different rules
about how effort works during a no-cost extension,
and sometimes they're pretty explicit about that.
So NIH has a very explicit policy
that as long as,
really as long as there is measurable effort maintained,
like PI effort can go down to whatever it needs.
There's no prior approval needed
to reduce those effort commitments.
Because...
Because basically-
Yeah, more or less,
as long as there's measurable effort maintained,
they don't want to hear anything about effort.
They don't want us to request anything.
It's just they're fine with that.
For NSF and most other federal agencies
that have multi-year awards,
the effort commitments during the NCE period,
it's not based on adding new effort to the award.
So let's say we commit six person months over three years
on the no-cost extension.
All the no-cost extension is doing
is adding an extra year to the award.
So now instead of having three years
to meet that six person month effort commitment,
we have four years to meet that six person month commitment.
We're not, it would be actually pretty ridiculous to say,
for them to say, "Oh yeah, like,
we'll give you a no-cost extension,
but we're now expecting you
to do an extra two person months
over this next year of the award."
That would not be like right for them to do.
And so what often will happen is someone,
you know, most people will have already met
their effort commitments
prior to that no-cost extension period,
and so really what we're being held to
is just that UVM minimum effort policy at that point.
Because we're not gonna waive that minimum effort policy
just because a PI has met
their effort commitments to the sponsor
because they still have a minimum effort required
in order to continue serving as that PI at UVM.
So again, effort commitment can,
could have already been met going to the sponsor,
but UVM still has a commitment
or that UVM still has a minimum effort requirement
that has to be met.
-: So it's still, we still...
So we did kind of, we did recently put out
some effort guidance for no-cost extensions.
And just to clarify, that 1% minimum,
it's an average for the budget period.
So as long as the PI actually had-
So let's just pretend that
it was year four of an award was the last year anticipated
and it was a 12-month period
and they got a 12-month extension.
That year four is now actually a 24-month period.
It's not really a fifth budget period
'cause they're not getting more budget.
It's an extension of that fourth budget period.
So as long as that PI
had 2% or more in that original period,
that 2% for 12 months
becomes 1% for 24 months.
And so they actually don't,
aren't required to maintain an additional 1% over that.
So it's, we are acknowledging that it is an average
over what the budget period is,
and we acknowledge that most sponsors
consider the no-cost extension period
an extension to the final budget period.
And so I just wanted, so if there's questions on that,
we can also talk about that in part two as well,
or if anything comes up here.
-: Yeah, and I also want to say too
this is part of the reason why
it's really important to follow our guidance
on that budget justification too.
Because let's say we're doing an NSF award
or something like that that's awarded cumulatively,
and what we say in the budget justification is like,
we will put 10% effort on this award every year.
Well, then there is an implication
that if you're adding another year to the award,
that's another 10% effort.
But that's wrong.
Like that's not a necessary thing.
There's no reason to ever do that.
And so, but we would hold you
to that extra effort commitment.
Now in the case of an NCE, if it's really clear and obvious,
like, yeah, we may just need to notify,
you know, do some prior approval thing.
It's possible where there would be a workaround.
Like we're not going to try to hold you
to that unnecessary extra effort.
But it adds an administrative burden
that's totally unnecessary
because, you know, all the sponsor needed to see
was that cumulative effort commitment,
was that effort commitment of person months
and not saying like every year,
you know, every year that this,
that we are working on this grant,
we will put 10% on this grant.
Like then you're saying,
you are implying at least
that in a no-cost extension period
that's an extra year of the grant,
you would do that.
And that's just not how effort is thought of
on federal awards,
and that's not how we think of effort.
And so don't sort of add unnecessary complication
and administrative burden.
Just sort of, you know, follow our suggestions
for putting your effort commitments down on a proposal.
And, you know, at SPA when we're reviewing these,
we do look at those things.
We do, we will likely ask you to change if it looks like
you're making an effort commitment that goes,
you know, beyond what is required in these circumstances
or will lead to some headaches down the line,
I guess you could say.
-: Josh, would you mind actually going back one slide?
Well, now two.
So Sherry had a question regarding,
it said regarding reflecting work as performed,
would the same be true if a person worked 0% for six months
and 20% for six months?
It is my understanding that 0% effort
for greater than a quarter can be an issue.
And so yes, so I wanted to point out-
-: Well, this here, actually we're doing,
we have a whole absences and reductions.
You want to do that? -: Oh, right.
-: And talk about that. -: Sorry, yeah.
More like about the language. -: This is the last slide.
Yeah. -: So do you have
like that example of like the...
Like for here the example of the grant related to ice,
like ice depth may have a field season
and correspond to effort of December through March
and disengagement for the non-field season.
So if something like that is written into the proposal,
then the 0% for the non-working months
is already acknowledged during the proposal and the award.
If it wasn't something that was planned,
then that would be a disengagement
that the sponsor isn't aware of
that we'll get to in that other piece.
-: So...
And I realize, I feel like maybe next time
we'll switch this up and we'll talk a little bit about
being held to those effort commitments earlier on.
But what sponsors are looking at is,
you know, when we make an effort commitment to them,
you know, the PD/PI, for example,
if they, if we are going to be reducing our effort
by 25% or more from what we've committed to,
then we have to get prior approval from the sponsor.
And so...
You know, who is considered
or who is, who needs that prior approval,
you can look at the NSF prior approval matrix,
and it will sort of lay out what sponsors care about,
you know, PD/PIs versus co-PD/PIs, things like that.
And when we're talking about effort reductions here,
it's going, we're calculating it based on anticipated
versus committed prior approval in an award increment,
not marginal percent effort.
So again, it's not like,
oh, I'm gonna reduce my effort next month
from 20% to 5%.
Do I need prior approval for that?
Like, no, you don't.
You just never, no, that's not necessary.
We're looking at is over the award increment,
how much have you already worked,
how many person months have you already worked,
and how many person months have we committed to?
So if it's a one-year commit,
if it's a yearly award like NIH
and we say we're gonna award,
you know, we're committing to one person month,
if you've worked
.5 person months already
and you need to reduce your effort,
we're looking at an extra .25 person months
before you need to get prior approval.
So if you're going,
if you've already worked 0.5 person months
and you need to go down to whatever, 1% or something,
that will probably require a prior approval
because you'll be at below .75 person months here
'cause that's 75% of the effort commitment
of one person month.
But let's say you're looking at
how you want to reduce your effort
and you calculate
that you're anticipating that you'll actually,
will meet that,
and maybe over the course of that period,
you'll be at .8 person months instead of one person month.
Well, then you're fine.
We don't need any prior approval.
That's just the effort
that you are going to have worked on that grant.
And so, again, it's going to be looking at
how much you worked
and then how much you were anticipating working
after the proposed effort reduction.
And legitimately, I don't find it,
I find that it's fairly uncommon
to actually need sponsors' prior approval
for an effort reduction that a PI is talking about.
Most times when PIs are sort of discussing effort changes,
it is well within the allowable effort changes
without needing a sponsor approval for a prior approval.
And we are also, like this is also some,
one of the reasons why it's important
to limit that information we're sending to the sponsor.
Again, if we didn't have any effort commitments
in the proposal itself,
then we're not being held to anything.
So a PI can reduce their effort as much as they want
without needing prior approval.
Similarly, if we were very clear
about that effort in person months
over that increment of the funding period,
you know, then we would be doing
our normal way of handling this.
However, you know, even if we did not put
any effort commitments in the proposal,
we're still going to be setting up that, those effort,
the effort in all of our systems,
and we are still going to be
having the same sort of effort commitment details.
And basically, we treat the backend,
how everything is set up
more or less the same
if we've committed effort officially in the proposal
versus not committing effort officially in the proposal
for a lot of really good reasons.
However, if you are handling this grant
and in the course of the grant,
a PI needs to reduce their effort,
then we just don't need sponsor prior approval to do that.
But all of the other pieces are basically the same
in terms of how we set up those effort commitments
just in order to give everyone the tools
to manage their effort commitments
and all that kind of stuff.
Now in terms of absences,
I think, so there's a little bit of gray area here.
Now, if a PI is going to be absent for that period,
we absolutely need,
we need sponsor prior approval
if a PI is going to be absent
for a period greater than 90 days.
So a really good example of this would be
a PI is on sick leave for six months.
You know, we need prior approval,
and normally what would happen is we have to,
we would have to identify a substitute PI to handle that.
Because the idea is there is no one managing this grant.
There's no PI on this grant
serving as the role of PI, overseeing things,
doing all the things that we require a PI to do.
So that's a very clear-cut situation.
If someone is working 0% for six months,
because they are absent from their role as PI,
we always need prior approval for that.
If it's a situation
where you're just planning on working in the summer
and not in the academic year,
that's a normal situation.
Like the vast majority of NSF grants at UVM
are held by nine-month faculty,
and most units that do that
as a rule don't put effort commitments on to the sponsor
for that nine-month academic period,
just in the summer.
And so, you know, that whole nine-month period
isn't anticipated that we have effort
if we didn't tell the sponsor
we were gonna put effort during that period.
And so that would be a good situation where...
-: If they do have effort though
and they're not charging it to the award,
it needs to be charged to a 291 chartstring
at the department level.
'Cause you need to make sure any effort
that's worked on that during the academic year
that hasn't been proposed and budgeted for to the sponsor
isn't charged to other sponsored projects.
So that's kind of what the department is,
has that 291 chartstring
'cause the department's basically supporting that research.
So 291 represents departmental research.
-: But we're going a little beyond the effort commitment
in terms of absences there,
but yes, that is true and that's, yeah.
-: But it's in the proposal.
You acknowledge and the sponsor acknowledges
that you're only gonna be demonstrating your effort
on the budget purposes of,
for the summer months in that case.
-: Yeah, but there's, so then between those two poles,
there's a lot of gray area that is sort of...
I would tend to say that there's a lot of gray area
and if you are anticipating a situation like this,
I would reach out to your SPA RA,
and we can let you know.
Like we'll work with Cost Accounting
to see if this would constitute an absence
versus be like a normal situation
where a PI is still serving as PI.
Like again it's-
-: Like Angela has a- -: If you need a substitute PI,
that's an absence, right?
So no one is, if no one is managing the work at UVM,
that's a situation that a sponsor has to be aware of
and has to approve,
and normally we would, you know, identify a substitute PI
for that period.
So, but between the situation
where someone is literally not here, not around,
not overseeing their grant
and a very sort of normal...
-: And they're expected to be.
-: Expect, yeah.
There's some gray area,
and in those cases, I would just sort of reach out
to Dawn and to a SPA RA
and figure out how this fits in to that.
Yeah. -: And so Angela had a question
that said would what Sherry mentioned in the case above
where you would, sorry.
Would what Sherry mentioned be a case
where you would want to be more specific in the proposal?
For example,
instead of saying- -: I wouldn't use
any of this language you're doing.
Yeah, sorry, I know for caution's sake,
we should read the question, sorry.
-: Yeah, so for example,
instead of saying 2% for the academic year,
would you write 4%
for four and a half months of the academic year?
And so just right off the bat,
that still doesn't tell the sponsor
that you'd be disengaged for three consec-
'Cause it's three consecutive months,
so they could in theory work every other month
and not be disengaged.
So that still wouldn't be clear from that respect,
but I'll let Josh go on the other points on that too,
the language there and what he would suggest,
-: Yeah, I would say...
Well, so first of all, also just to be clear,
most federal sponsors treat a person month
like a person month.
They don't treat...
So they don't, from an effort commitment perspective,
just to clarify, from an effort commitment perspective,
you're not committing a summer person month first thing
versus an academic person month.
You're committing a person month.
So they treat a person month the same
regardless of when it's done.
So I just wanted to be clear
that like if you commit one person month in the summer
and you actually do it in the academic year,
that's not an effort commitment issue.
There's no, that person month is a person month.
We're good.
But from a question of planned versus unplanned absences,
better language might be like,
something like we anticipate working on this for whatever,
.9 person months during the academic year
and 1.1 person months during the summer.
Or honestly, what I would say is
if you know a specific limited...
If you are certain you are only going to work
during a certain specific limited period,
you might say something like,
you know, we are committing two person months per year
the growing season for this,
or we anticipate doing our work
during the growing season for this,
which is likely this period to this period.
That gives us flexibility still but it still makes,
like the sponsor knows that you are anticipating
doing most of your work in a certain period of time.
And again, from a commitment perspective,
that is all that is,
it's also, it's unnecessary.
So if we're just talking about effort commitments,
we're committing, we're talking about
the amount of time we're expecting to work.
That doesn't, it doesn't matter when you do it
or if you take a certain amount of time off between
or if you have 0% effort for some period
and a bunch in another period.
From an effort commitment perspective, it doesn't matter.
The absence is a different question
that is like related to effort commitments,
but it doesn't have, it's sort of a...
We're talking about meeting the goals of one thing
versus another sort of also area
of administrative questions that a sponsor might have.
All right, so that is our last slide here
and we are actually a minute over time,
but I'm happy to stick around
if anyone has any extra questions.
And then yes, again, we definitely recommend people
also joining us for part two,
where we go a lot into the weeds of verification
and sort of actually administering these awards that we get.
-: Yeah, I'll walk you through the,
there's ways to use the PeopleSoft PI portal
and the effort commitment page per individual
and how it links to that individual's projects,
and you can verify both key and non-key personnel
on a project level.
And I'll also walk through those of you who have access
to the effort reporting system,
especially those who have individuals with dual appointments
or the directors with the additional pays,
and you want to see how those impact
what the effort form would look like
for the end of the year.
We do bring in payroll
into the effort reporting system throughout the year,
so you do have access to see what that's,
how that all impacts this.
So those are some of the features
that we'll go through in part two on,
yeah, it's March 14th
'cause we forgot to update that slide.
So I apologize that I overlooked that on both of those.
So yeah, March 14th.
The course number is still the same, the CPT044,
and it's from 9:00 to 11:00.
Look forward to seeing you guys there.
Thanks for joining us and for your questions.
-: Yes, thank you very much. -: If anything else comes up,
feel free to reach out to us
as you think about it more and questions come up.