Administrative Coordinating Council of Deans (ACCD)

1. PIs should consult with their Assistant Dean(s) prior to presenting to ACCD.

• All match requests are reviewed initially for:
  • Academic merit
  • Scope of impact
    • Minimum of 3 units: Office of Research + 2 colleges/schools or 3 colleges/schools
    • Breadth of faculty involved
  • Whether a match is required (formally or implicitly) by the funding agency or simply desired
  • Whether a match is necessary for grant to be competitive
    • Without a match, the grant would not be submitted
• If a request does not pass initial review, it may be negotiated outside of ACCD
• The Assistant Dean may refer PI to Interdisciplinary Research Support (IRS) in the Office of Research or to their internal finance personnel for budget-related guidance.

2. Funding requests should be provided to ACCD at least five (5) weeks prior to funding agency deadline.

3. Within Each College/School, matching responsibilities may be shared by participating PI, department, and dean’s office.

• Practices may vary among colleges/schools.
• Presentation by lead PI to ACCD should address participation by co-PIs.

4. ACCD support is reduced proportionate to sponsor reductions in the final award

To further help you determine which proposal elements are best to include in your ACCD match request, see School/College Preferences/Priorities for Grant Proposals below.

Current ACCD Guidelines for Research Grants

1. For research grant proposals that require an unspecified demonstration of institutional commitment, ACCD will match up to 8% of Direct Costs (minus subcontracts).

2. If an institutional contribution is not required, the ACCD contribution may be lower than 8% of DC.

3. For proposals that require a specific contribution from the institution, ACCD will make every effort to meet the required match amount.

4. Administrative structure should be established at proposal time based on programmatic needs

• Administrative expenses and thus the Indirect Cost Return (ICR) allocation will follow this structure.

5. If indirect cost returns (ICR) will be returned to campus as a result of this award, the unit or units that receive the ICR will generally split the cost-share 50/50 with the Office of Research (OR).

• i.e., two colleges/schools each manage half of the project expenditures, thus the Deans’ ICR and OP tax liability is split 50% to each college — Match is 50% Office of Research / 25% Dean 1 / 25% Dean 2

6. If there is no ICR, the cost-share split is still determined by where the work is done (where the expenditures are managed) among the colleges/schools.

To further help you determine which proposal elements are best to include in your ACCD match request, see School/College Preferences/Priorities for Grant Proposals below.

Current ACCD Guidelines for Equipment Grants

1. PI must articulate broad campus impact

• Involve faculty across multiple colleges/schools
• ACCD may require that equipment be located in shared facilities
• PI must present a realistic plan for funding operation and maintenance beyond grant period

2. ACCD generally splits the cost-share 50% Office of Research / 50% Deans.

• This is the current practice for limited submission equipment matches that require 30% match, though an alternate model may be determined if commitments exceed the ability to fund the match

3. Indirect cost rate is generally 0% on equipment grants. Dean commitments are therefore allocated by projected equipment usage:

• (preferred method) recharge revenue by school/college, or
• by the school/college affiliation of investigators on the project

4. UCOP tax on the matching portion should be included in the calculation of necessary support through ACCD, but tax on non-match portions should be paid by the home unit.

To further help you determine which proposal elements are best to include in your ACCD match request, see School/College Preferences/Priorities for Grant Proposals below.

Current ACCD Guidelines for Training Grants

1. Training grant requests have several components:

• Administrative costs, to be covered by home unit
• Difference between what the grant will pay and true costs for partial grant-funded pre-doc trainee slots; this is Office of Graduate Studies Dean’s priority
• All costs for additional trainee slots

2. Current practice varies but generally

• Office of Graduate Studies funds the tuition/fees for slots partially funded by the grant (for example NIH awards 60%/ graduate studies 40%)
• Graduate Studies may provide additional support for non-resident tuition, fellowships, and graduate student research appointments.
• The Deans through ACCD fund the costs for the additional unfunded slots (could be TAs)
• Each Deans’ commitment of support is determined at the time the student trainees are selected using this formula: 50% from the lead dean of the student’s graduate group (excluding administration costs), 50% from the lead dean of the student’s faculty trainer (excluding administration costs), and 100% of administrative salary/benefits costs for administering the grant from the lead dean for the training grant.
• Lead Dean provides additional administrative support

3. Graduate students on large center and program grants are generally appointed as Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs)

• There should not be a gap in fees and tuition
• The campus GSR buy-down program supports these students
• Additional slots on training grants funded by OGS are established not as GSRs or TAs but as fellowships or traineeships

4. Core grants are evaluated on a case-by-case basis

• Graduate education and training must be a priority

5. Graduate students on R01 type grants are not generally supported by Graduate Studies or ACCD

6. UCOP tax on the matching portion should be included in the calculation of necessary support through ACCD, but tax on non-match portions should be paid by the home unit.

7. All indirect costs flow to the administrating unit.

8. Indirect Cost Return

• The indirect cost rate is generally
  • 8% on NIH training grants
  • The full federal F&A rate on NSF grants but applicable to only a small portion of the grant funding
• The flow of indirect costs to the college/school administrating the grant:
  • Is estimated to be the Dean’s share (currently 30%) of the 8% indirect rate on the award, or ~3% of the direct costs
  • The UCOP tax is a percentage (currently 1.55-1.79%) of the total expenditures

To further help you determine which proposal elements are best to include in your ACCD match request, see School/College Preferences/Priorities for Grant Proposals below.

Current ACCD Preferences/Priorities for Grant Proposals:

• College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (same preferences/priorities as SVM below):
  • Priorities: Large multi project research grants (PO1, U54, P42, P30 and equivalent from other agencies) and Institutional Training Grants (T32, T35, etc.) for which our faculty are PIs or contribute as Primary Training Faculty.
  • We are less supportive of large equipment add-ons to these kinds of grant proposals, NIH SIG proposals, or special equipment asks for existing Campus Cores. We believe this should be the purview of the Campus Core Program and should be coordinated with existing and future designated Campus Cores.
  • Operational costs are a lower priority.
• College of Biological Sciences:
  • We will endeavor to meet cost share requests required by funding agencies in support of our faculty’s research and training efforts.
  • We do not have a preference for supporting research, equipment, training grants, or operational support. We do have a preference for supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary research and for research programs with a training component.
• College of Engineering:
  • We will attempt to meet cost share requests required by funding agencies. COE guidelines for providing support.
  • We do not have a preference for supporting research, equipment and training grants, however, we do not provide operational support.
• College of Letters and Science:
  • L&S Faculty member is a/the Lead PI on the Research/Training/Equipment Grants.
  • L&S prefers matching on graduate student support, faculty in-kind support where possible.
  • We prioritize cost sharing on grants where share of ICR will come to the College.
  • We do not provide match support for operational expenses.
• School of Education:
  • We have a GAANN grant, and we will apply for an Institute for Education Sciences (IES) training grant this year. We also home to several large multi-unit IES and NSF research grants. Perhaps not surprisingly our equipment needs tend to be modest. However, our cost sharing needs/requests for renovation of space, annual workshops/symposia, website development, graduate students, and supplies are frequent among SOE PIs. Our equipment requests may change with an influx of new technology oriented educational faculty.
• School of Medicine:
  • Priorities: Training grants, research grants, equipment grants, operational support
• School of Veterinary Medicine (same as CA&ES above):
  • Priorities: Large multi project research grants (PO1, U54, P42, P30 and equivalent from other agencies) and Institutional Training Grants (T32, T35, etc.) for which our faculty are PIs or contribute as Primary Training Faculty.
  • We are less supportive of large equipment add-ons to these kinds of grant proposals, NIH SIG proposals, or special equipment asks for existing Campus Cores. We believe this should be the purview of the Campus Core Program and should be coordinated with existing and future designated Campus Cores.
  • Operational costs are a lower priority.
• Office of Research:
  • OR prefers to support equipment.
  • OR strongly encourages all major equipment it supports to be housed in core facilities and available to multiple PIs
  • OR prefers to avoid providing match support for personnel
• Graduate Studies priorities:
  • Training grants
    • National Institutes of Health T32 / T35
    • Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) – US Department of Education
    • NSF Research Traineeship (NRT)
    • National Needs Graduate and Postgraduate Fellowship (NNF) – US Department of Agriculture
  • Campus strategic initiatives with a major training component
    • Goal is a 1:5 match in the number of slots funded by Graduate Studies to the granting agency
  • ACCD encourages High Performance Computing clusters to be available to more than a few PIs.

ACCD Guidelines for Campus Research Core Facility (CRCF) Support

ACCD recognizes the importance of institutional investments in order to assure sustainability of Campus Research Core Facilities (CRCF) operations, maintain CRCF competitiveness and implement new technologies to meet the research mission of UCD.  In order to make proactive fiscal year financial planning decisions, the ACCD will entertain all CRCF requests at one time in the fiscal year to appropriately assess requests in the context of all identified needs. In light of the FY2019-2020 Provost Budget letter (July 26, 2019) indicating a campus structural deficit of approximately $20m in FY19-20, all research-based units will need to be very judicious in their review of investment requests for FY20-21 and in use of current FY19-20 discretionary funds.

As such, the process for CRCF investment requests to the ACCD has been revised. A coordinated process for submission of all CRCF requests in the Fall will provide input into the Spring fiscal year budget preparation season.  This timing will also be useful for the consideration of institutional support for shared equipment grant programs.

Process:

Requests for cross-campus investment funds to support operations or equipment will be solicited by the lead Dean for each CRCF (see below Allowable costs for consideration).  CRCFs are requested to follow the following process (dates indicated are for 2019):

Sept 16 – Oct 18 (4+ weeks):

• Use the ACCD CRCF Request Template(s) found at the bottom of this webpage (https://research.ucdavis.edu/offices/committees/accd/). These include a presentation-style narrative template as well as a financial/budget template. Please note that a list is required of all involved faculty by school/college and the corresponding percentage involvement for each school/college.
• Submit Request to the Assistant Dean in the appropriate College/School Dean’s Office for initial vetting and determination of value of submission to the ACCD.

By Oct 18:

• The Dean’s Office will forward the request to the Research Core Facilities Program (RCFP) for assessment by the Research Core Advisory Council (RCAC) and prioritization.

Nov 11 (3 week review period):

• RCAC review meeting for proposal prioritization

Nov 19/Dec 3:

• Selected requests will be presented to the ACCD by the CRCF Director for discussion.

Allowable costs for consideration:

• Operational funds for:
  • The Technical/Associate Director’s salary and benefits or other key personnel.
  • Instrument maintenance costs. This could include in-core maintenance, external service contracts, payments into a self- funded maintenance program, and/or Catastrophic Repair Program (CRP) costs.
  • Other expenditures relevant to essential core needs could be considered (e.g., investments to promote collaborative research, and institutional investments for CRCF grant applications).
• Equipment funds for:
  • Acquisition and/or development of cutting-edge/unique instruments.
  • Acquisition of new commodity equipment considered basic necessities (not cutting edge).
  • Replacement of existing equipment.
  • R&D on an instrument in collaboration with an instrument manufacturer; UC Davis retains the instrument afterward.
  • R&D efforts for an instrument funded by industry partners; UC Davis retains the instrument afterward.

Requests should be developed with the following assessment criteria in mind:

Operational Request Assessment Criteria:

• Is the core service commodity-based and offered more efficiently outside of the campus? Are the same services available within close proximity and/or provided by another university or commercial lab at more competitive prices, especially for commodity type core services? If so, define the value added for having the services on campus and the justification for investment.
• Can the core increase recharge rates to preclude the need for operating support? If not, what is the justification why recharge rates cannot fully support the core?
• Review last core facility recharge proposal submission to ensure the unit has assessed the true cost of the services they offer in their recharge rate in the absence of any campus investment. Recharge rate proposals should reflect cost-based accounting.
• Review all expenditures reflected in the core facilities budget (sources & uses report) for the past three fiscal years. Review any accumulated surplus/debt for all sources/funds supporting the facility including depreciation, mark-up or campus-provided funds.  Assess the factors that have led to the surplus/deficit and the facility intention for those funds.
• Review summary of efforts to obtain alternative support. Has the CRCF described efforts to secure funding from alternatives listed in the Appendix?
• Does the CRCF discuss enhancing operational efficiencies and provide strategies for improving operations?
• Determine whether the request is associated with the need for bridge funding due to the loss of a large internal or external client or grant that supported the core facility.

Equipment Request Assessment Criteria:

• Has the facility submitted proposals for instrumentation grants?
• Has the facility explored other funding options listed in the Appendix?
• Has the facility explored buying versus leasing and provided a rationale for purchase?
• Has the facility considered equipment depreciation in the recharge rate? If not, what is the justification for not including it? If so, how have the funds been transferred to an equipment reserve fund and what is the balance?

General CRCF Assessment Criteria:

• Assess the extent to which researchers use the internal core versus another service off campus. This can be assessed through the use of surveys.
• Assess usage trends. Is utilization increasing or decreasing?  What percentage of use is attributed to the top 5 clients?
• Assess if any core services have become obsolete, i.e., new technology or services have replaced it. Does the facility appear to be evolving to meet the changing needs of the research community?
• Assess the financial stability of the core. Review the income statements from the core including all relevant subsidies.
• Assess whether RCAC scientific impact measures indicate that the core is supporting research in a meaningful way, e.g. judging by the number of researchers being served, number of publications reported.
• How well is the facility managed administratively? Do they utilize best practices for usage tracking and cost/revenue recovery?  Is it a professionally managed operation staffed by professionals rather than graduate students/post-docs?  Is there a clear and active governance structure (Faculty Director, Technical Director/Manager, Facility Advisory Committee (FAC))?  How often does the FAC meet? 

Appendix: Types of Funding Mechanisms for Instrumentation

1. Federal grants
   1. NIH S10 (SIG & HEI) small > $600k and large >$2M, no required match, but need to show institutional support to be competitive
   2. NSF-MRI 2 tracks <$1M and >$1M max of 3 per University, must match 30% https://nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18513/nsf18513.htm
   3. NSF mid-scale >$5M
   4. DURIP DOD, no cost sharing required
2. Donations (identify specific development offices (Chancellor, Provost, OVCR, Deans) that will represent and market UCD needs for state-of-the-art core equipment)
3. Outright “Purchase”
   1. Lease-to-buy (financed by recharge)
   2. Loan agreement with UCOP
   3. Loan from BIA and matching from Schools/Colleges
   4. CRCF Enhancement Funding Program
   5. Individual ICR funds
4. Cost-matching – To support CRCF equipment purchases, the Office of Research (OR) will typically match contributions from schools and colleges 50/50. OR requires that the equipment be in a shared facility. For all other CRCF funding requests, OR will consider a 50% match, but may determine it more appropriate for deans to cover these amounts. In general, any facilities already operationally supported by OR or central campus (Provost) would receive less than 50% of any additional ask and more cost-sharing would be requested of the Deans. OR funding decisions will be made either in consultation with the Administrative Coordinating Council of Deans (ACCD) or through its internal cost-sharing committee. (For more on OR cost-sharing, select the UC Davis Office of Research Funding Programs tab at https://research.ucdavis.edu/proposals-grants-contracts/funding-opportunities/links-to-funding-sources/).
5. Licensing Revenue
6. Depreciation – but not if federal funds are used to purchase the equipment. Depreciation – a goal would be to use depreciation accounts as much as possible, i.e., build the depreciation expense into the recharge rates. Note, sometimes core facilities can do this and depending on the cost of their equipment, sometimes they can’t.
7. Foundations – e.g., Keck Institute, Chan Zuckerberg Foundation.
8. Industry partnerships and collaborations – e.g., Nikon, Agilent, Waters
9. Howard Hughes Medical Institute – must be a HHMI investigator to receive an instrument funding
10. Lease only (lease to lease, not to purchase). This may be useful for instruments that are changing rapidly.