The Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA)

Reaching ORPA by Phone

Research Administrator/Secretary

Cheryl Williams/Nancy Braden	58033
Donna Senator/Karen Ernst	52151
Donna Beyea/Joanne Piccirilli	58036
Donna Galloway/Edna Maracle	51505

Information Systems

Lori Hume	59096
Steve Small	50648
Charlene Sinclair	55776

Pre-Award

Barbara Dick

58044

Director's Office

Mark Coburn	55370
Gunta Liders	55373
Gerri Wind	55373

While we encourage you to use the above extensions when calling ORPA, you may also reach us by dialing our historic extensions of x5-4031 and x5-4034. Additional information regarding specific department assignments (which remain unchanged) and general information about ORPA may be found at our web site at http://www.rochester.edu/orpa.

What is UR-Coeus?

UR-COEUS stores and manages high-level proposal data and very detailed information on awards. The database contains a complete history of every change made to an award from the notice of award through close-out. As examples of its versatility, UR-COEUS stores all agency contacts in an electronic Rolodex, maintains all reporting requirements (financial, technical, property, patents) and maintains the terms and conditions as well as the required approvals for an award. University departments will be able to access proposal and funding information, ascertain what "rules" apply to a particular award and know who the critical contacts are at a selected funding agency--all at their desktops!

Why did the University license UR-COEUS?

After examining other sponsored programs management systems, the University licensed COEUS from MIT last February, and began work on its implementation in May 1997 with the loan of expert programming support from Administrative Computing Services (ACS). MIT's system was considered the most user-friendly and, given MIT's standing as a leading research institute, we were confident that the system would meet our needs. In fact, COEUS is currently licensed by more than 30 leading research universities, including Yale, Princeton and Columbia Universities. University faculty and administrators participated in the evaluation of products and in the decision to ultimately license this system. Information needs expressed by principal investigators, departments, dean's offices and central offices were surprisingly similar. Wish list items consisted of the following:

• on-line access to proposal, award and expenditure information;
• flexible reporting capabilities on user-defined needs;
• notification of reporting deadlines, close-out procedures and post-award regulations;
• ability to automatically route proposals, protocols and revised budgets;
• ability to extract and manipulate sponsored programs data for analysis, trends and forecasting.

UR-COEUS already provides the user with most of these features; additional needs (such as electronic routing) will be addressed with future enhancements and the licensing of MIT's Electronic Proposal System in 1998.

University Modifications and Enhancements

Conversion of Historical Data

University Modifications and Enhancements

Future enhancements planned for UR-COEUS include the addition of "Authorized Purchasees" fields, a mechanism to automatically track whether an investigator has a signed Intellectual Property Agreement on file, and the rollout of a Macintosh version of the system.

New Reporting Tool - UR-COEUS Reporting

Implementation Plans

Looking Forward to EPS

This proposal software will enable the creation of and secure electronic routing for proposals through multiple levels in our University environment, as well as to our major federal, state and corporate sponsors. Because privacy is a concern in the creation of a proposal, EPS understands the rights and roles of individuals in the proposal process, and it will provide or limit access as appropriate. These rights can be structured at the investigator's designation. The system will allow investigators and/or key administrators to create templates and build proposals online; flexibility to cut and paste from other applications will be provided as well.

Also built into EPS are institutional "business rules" for sponsored research. In this way, EPS will ensure that all proposals are created with certain institutional standards (i.e., appropriate escalation factors, correct benefit rates). Special reviews that are required by University committees will be secured in parallel and routed automatically.

MIT is working very closely with the federal agencies to ensure that EPS conforms and will interface with the various federal electronic initiatives and with Electronic Data Interface (EDI) standards. The way we write and send grants is changing, and we will keep you up to date with the necessary tools and information.

We recognize that some investigators and administrators may be uncomfortable or reluctant to use EPS, whether due to concerns about security or ease of use. EPS will be a whole new way of doing business for ORPA as well! We would like to assure you that we will do extensive testing and prototyping before implementing EPS, even in a beta-test environment. We are also planning on doing numerous focus groups with the University community to explore concerns and strategize on changing sponsored programs' proposal processes. Ultimately, our mutual goal is to create an efficient, user-friendly and streamlined proposal processing system, and we need your input and assistance in order to accomplish this goal.

To Find Out More

Lori Hume, ORPA's Manager of Information Systems lhume@orpa.rocheter.edu or x5-0906

Steve Small, Senior Programmer/Analyst sesl@acs.rochester.edu or x5-0648

Charlene Sinclair, Information Systems Assistant csinclai@orpa.rochester.edu or x5-5776

Should you have any questions or concerns with respect to the system, or wish to participate as a beta-test user for UR-Coeus, please do not hesitate to contact any of them. We will also be providing more information on UR-COEUS as it develops on ORPA's web page.

ORPA Web Site Update

Holiday Schedule