Mission

Mission Statement

The Office of Sponsored Projects serves as a central resource to support the research enterprise by providing guidance and stewardship for the research community and the College.

The Office of Sponsored Projects directly contributes to the academic mission of Dartmouth College by providing support for obtaining sponsored project funds and managing sponsored project activity. Sponsored projects enriches the Dartmouth community by providing revenue to establish new programs, conduct faculty research, and provide instructional and other services. In addition, sponsored project funds support professional growth for faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and staff.

The Office of Sponsored Projects is comprehensive in its scope and mission, handling both pre award and post award services. The Office has primary responsibility for assuring Dartmouth's compliance with the regulations of a range of funding agencies, for negotiating Dartmouth's indirect cost rate, and monitoring college-wide implications of these negotiations on a regular basis.

Sponsored projects fall within several general functional categories. Examples of those categories are: research, training, curriculum development, public services, fellowships, art exhibitions, and equipment awards. This support extends from a proposal's conception through to the completion of a sponsored project award.

The Office of Sponsored Projects has identified the following goals in support of its mission:

• Provides individual and/or small group assistance to encourage effective use of sponsored project services.
• Organizes and participates in workshops and presentations related to grant activities.
• Serves as contact point for information and interaction with faculty, deans, administrators and sponsor representatives on sponsored project matters.
• Develops, organizes, and oversees various current awareness services providing grants-related information to faculty and administrators.
• Monitors trends in sponsored research and responds to changes in the field.

Services Offered

The Office of Sponsored Projects has institutional responsibility for protecting the College's interests as those interests relate to the seeking and management of sponsored project opportunities. The Office is empowered by the Trustees to make commitments on behalf of the institution, and in doing so must be aware of and comply with all current College and sponsor policies. To insure both protection of the College's interests, and continued and varied sponsor support, the Office of Sponsored Projects routinely engages in the following activities:

• Serves as the College's focal point for sponsored activities from federal, international, state, and private sources.
• Initiates policies and procedures and certifies compliance with federally mandated regulations that impact many areas of the institution.
• Reviews sponsored project proposals and responds as institutional officials authorized to commit the institution to external agreements.
• Negotiates agreements with regard to budget, terms and conditions, while coordinating with the PI that the scope of research is in line with the funds available.
• Maintains the College's official database for proposals and awards, in order to project future funding trends, provide data for tenure decisions and analyze financial impacts on the institution.
• Acts as a permanent member of the Council on Sponsored Activities, the institutional committee responsible for research policy, and coordinates the agenda for the Council.
• Represents Dartmouth College at national and regional meetings concerned with improving the research environment locally and nationally.

Partner Offices

The Technology Transfer Office

The purpose of Dartmouth's Technology Transfer Office stems from Public Law 96-517, the Bayh-Dole Act, which postulates that inventions arising from Federal government sponsorship and assigned to the university, must be actively transferred to the private sector for the benefit of the general public. Therefore, patenting and licensing of inventions originated in the College and its professional schools comprise the largest share of the Technology Transfer Offices activities. Industry sponsored project agreements, including SBIRs and STTRs, material transfer agreements, State business assistance programs, and various other issues concerning academic collaborations with industry, also come under the Technology Transfer Offices purview.

The Committee For The Protection of Human Subjects (Institutional Review Board)

In 1992, the Office of Sponsored Projects assumed administrative responsibility for the Dartmouth Medical School's sponsored project activities. At that time administrative support for the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects (also known as the Institutional Review Board, or IRB) also came under the purview of the Office of Sponsored Projects.

The Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS), also referred to as the Institutional Review Board (IRB), is a federally mandated committee with the charge of overseeing all sponsored projects involving humcan participants. All sponsored projects involving humans (regardless of funding) must be reviewed and approved by the CPHS prior to initiation. The primary mission of the CPHS is to ensure that the rights and welfare of human research participants are protected. The CPHS office is a source of information for students, faculty and study coordinators who are involved with sponsored projects involving humans.