April 27, 2020

Research Council Meeting Minutes April 27, 2020 1:00pm Virtual Meeting via Microsoft TEAMS

Attendees: Jerry Lin, Scott Crawford, Chunda Chen, Ana Christensen, Xianchang Li, Bryan Proksch

Meeting brought to order at 1:03pm

1. Review and Approval of March 30, 2020 meeting

   Review and approve the minutes from the March 30, 2020 meeting. Ana Christensen made a motion to approve the minutes.
   Chunda Chen seconded.
   Motion passed.

2. Employment of undergraduate and graduate students on research grants and sponsored projects – student pay rate and FTE

   Jerry Lin: We have discussed pay rate for students on sponsored programs and we want to provide clear guidance for PIs to pay their student employees on sponsored projects. We of course need to compensate above the federal minimum wage. What we have decided is for undergraduate students the pay rate will be at least $10.00 an hour. For graduate students the pay rate will be at least $12.00 an hour or $1,000.00 a month at 49.5%.

   Ana Christensen made a motion to pay undergraduate students the pay rate will be at least $10.00 an hour. For graduate students the pay rate will be at least $12.00 an hour or $1,000.00 a month at 49.5%.
   Scott Crawford seconded the motion.

   Motion passed.

3. Budget of student tuition cost in grant submissions

   Jerry Lin: In the past, it has been rare that PIs charge student tuition against grants. Federal guidelines do allow for tuition to be charged and it has been done in many high education institutions. The advantage of covering student tuition is provide more support for student employees, the drawback is that it reduced the usable fund for performing research since most grants has a cap on the proposed budget. As of now, some proposed budgets are not hitting the ceiling so if the PI wants to use grant resources to pay tuition it can be covered. We do not want to require the PI to include it in the project budget, but we do want to encourage it as we want to ensure the grant covers the cost.

          Ana Christensen: Does it hurt or help PI’s to have this option?

          Jerry Lin: This is new for us so we do not know. Many proposal review panels favor it and grant officers are      required to follow the uniform guidance by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make a decision. As long as the grant allows it, we can encourage it.

Ana Christensen made a motion to allow student tuition to be included in the grant as long as the grant allows for it in accordance with the OMB guidelines.
Chunda Chen seconded the motion.

Motion passed.

4. Cayuse rollout and training

   Jerry Lin: We are moving forward with our Cayuse SP rollout as previously mentioned. June 1, 2020 we will be using SP for grant submissions. We will continue to accept both SP and other grant submission processes until January 1, 2021. After that time we will only accept Cayuse SP for grant submissions. We will run a series of trainings for Cayuse SP in the summer. After training, if you still need face to fact training, please let us know.

5. Research Performance Metrics in Lamar Strategic Plan 2020-2025

   Jerry Lin: I was contacted by Dean Terrebonne, Chief of Staff. He is tasked with creating the strategic plan for the next 5 years and he wants to obtain a current baseline for research performance metrics so that the improvement plan can be assessed for the next 5 years. The research office provides current grant submissions and awards along with current project statistics, including student participation in research from our Office of Undergraduate Research. I looked into the database of Web of Knowledge, currently Lamar publishes about 125 papers a year in respected journals. Please provide your input for additional research metrics that can be included.

   Ana Christensen: is there a way to add presentations to this information, such as when we receive an invitation to present?

   Jerry Lin: Conference papers are more difficult to track and can be part of faculty evaluation. In this request, we want to include traceable, easily measurable metrics to define University performance as a whole.

   Chunda Chen: Most journals at the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) did not come from Business.

Jerry Lin: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is included in Web of Science database. I will work with Dean Terrbonne to provide a comprehensive list of items which are easily traceable for the entire university.

VI. Roundtable and future meetings

Jerry Lin: This will be our last meeting for the Spring Semester. We will suspend for the summer and reconvene August 31, 2020.

Beverly Kemp and I will work on preparing the minutes for the website so we can close out the 2020 fiscal year.

Chunda Chen made a motion to adjourn. Ana Christensen seconded.
Motion passed.

Meeting adjourned at 1:51pm.