If there is a single overarching – some would say overwhelming – topic for grants administrators in 2014, it would have to be Uniform Guidance. Published December 26, 2013 and effective December 26, 2014 (yes, that’s just a week or so from now…), Uniform Guidance, formally known as 2CFR Part 200, will rock just about every boat we have in grants administration. While we are still waiting for most agencies to tell us officially how they are implementing the new guidance requirements, agency staff have are also busy trying to figure out how to standardize data elements they use to report awards as required by the DATA Act. Congress may have done little, but they argued a lot in 2014, for example: considering whether NSF should fund social science and climate science research, and digging into NSF’s peer review process. Grants communications issues made headlines in 2014 as well – we know how the urge to excel can harm individual reputations and also saw how institutions can spin their researcher’s findings in ways that titillate [Chronicle of Higher Education summary behind paywall], learned again how hard it can be to change the minds of those with whom we disagree, and realized we are being consumed by big data. And finally, we learned that sex does matter in research – and maybe in research administration.
Looking back – 2014 Grants Administration in Review
