Division of Research Offices > Contracts and Grants > Manage Awards

Administrative Responsibilities

The Principal Investigator is responsible for the technical direction of the sponsored project and for the authorization of all expenditures to be charged to that project. The Principal Investigator is responsible for expending funds in compliance with agency, state and University regulations, and for ensuring that project-specific costs are reasonable, allocable and allowable on that project. To aid the Principal Investigator in meeting this responsibility, the OCG Research Administrator ensures that applicable restrictions are clearly defined in the Notice of Award for the sponsored award.

The Department and College Business Administrators, with the support of the OCG Research Administrators, serve in a stewardship capacity over sponsored research projects by monitoring expenditures for compliance with regulations.

The Division of Research is responsible for providing Research Administration Compliance Training to the Department and College Business Administrators, certifying those who have completed the required core courses to enable them to review expenditure requests for compliance with agency and university restrictions. Only administrators who have completed the Research Administration Training required core courses are authorized to provide a certifying signature on expenditure documents. If a department does not have a certified administrator, the college administrator is required to certify all of that department’s expenditure documents.

There are some specific expenditure documents that still must pass through the Office of Contracts and Grants for approval. These documents will be identified in the Notice of Award, and include but are not limited to documents for the following purposes:

1. Purchase Requisition for Equipment within the last six months of the project
2. Purchase Requisition for Service using the Sponsored Project Contractual Agreement
3. All expenditure reallocation and correction/cost transfers involving grant cost center
   1. Payroll reallocation via email
   2. Journal reallocation via workflow
   3. Vouchers uses for reallocating from state to grant or from grant to state cost centers

The Sponsored Project Expenses Compliance Review/Approval Authorities form provides a matrix you may use to determine what the approval authority is for different types of account expenditures.