Administrative Coordinating Council of Deans (ACCD)

The Administrative Coordinating Council of Deans (ACCD) primarily coordinates institutional matches in support of major extramural grants that involve faculty from three or more schools/colleges (or faculty from Office of Research + 2 colleges/schools). The ACCD also coordinates institutional support for core facilities when deemed appropriate.

Grant requests include program project grants, center grants, limited submissions, major instrumentation grants, and training grants for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

The ACCD also operates as a forum where campus units discuss interdisciplinary research and teaching issues, emerging research areas, new technologies instrumentation, and other issues. The Vice Chancellor for Research provides staff support to the ACCD.

How to Request an ACCD Match

If you are a UC Davis PI who seeks an interdisciplinary match request, please review the guidelines below. Also, please note the templates available for your use further down the page.

General ACCD Guidelines for Match Requests

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 direct PI to the budget personnel responsible for drafting the project’s budget for budget guidance on the request.

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.

Research Grants

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.

Equipment Grants

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.

Training Grants

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
  • Effective April 2021, there was consensus for changing cost-share for administrative support from 100% Lead Dean to Participating Deans sharing up to 30% admin FTE (by percent involvement) and the Lead Dean covering administrative costs above that amount. A higher percent than 30% may be requested with sufficient justification.

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
  • Effective April 2021, there was consensus for changing cost-share for administrative support from 100% Lead Dean to Participating Deans sharing up to 30% admin FTE (by percent involvement) and the Lead Dean covering administrative costs above that amount. A higher percent than 30% may be requested with sufficient justification.

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.

Templates

To help you prepare an ACCD funding request, the following documents are available:

  • Presentation template:
    • This Powerpoint document is not mandatory, and can be used as a guide only, if preferred.
    • The information on slide 7 however is now required by ACCD: a list of all involved faculty by school/college and the corresponding percentage involvement for each school/college. This can be provided as a separate handout if preferred.
ACCD strongly recommends you use one of these financial/budget templates to format information in a manner to which they are accustomed:

School/College Preferences/Priorities for Grant Proposals

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.[/symple_toggle]

Contact Us

Send inquiries to:

Rebecca Linvill
Executive Analyst to the Vice Chancellor for Research
(530) 754-7806