Institutional Investment Story

The Associate Provost Research and Graduate studies oversees all aspects of the research office and works closely with the Grant and Communications facilitator to help faculty on grant facilitation, advice and editing, identifying/publicizing new funding opportunities delivering several workshops, research contracts and the planning, organizing and promotion of research events for the TWU campus, The Research Grants Officer (RGO) funded by the RSF provides budget advice to researchers during the pre-award stage, account set-up and post-award administration, and assists the Finance Office with internal audits and the preparation of financial reports. 

The Ethics and Research Grants Compliance Officer (ERGCO) funded by the RSF manages the review process for all research with human participants conducted by Trinity researchers and aids in grant budget preparation/organization of research events. The ERGCO consults with researchers to provide support for initial applications, as well as providing guidance regarding necessary amendments. The ERGCO also manages the board, handling aspects of training, and procedure development and documentation. Additional duties include developing and maintaining website content and transitioning the board from a paper process into an online process. Overall, the ethics support staff and committee were very busy preparing reports, managing site visits, and responding to inspection recommendations. In addition, the number of research projects and protocols requiring ethics evaluation is increasing, in part because more faculty are involving research projects within their undergraduate courses. 

The Research Support Fund also supports the Biosafety Officer, and the Animal Care Coordinator, as well as their activities with respect to the training researchers in ethics and compliance. We also invest a significant amount of time in ethics training for undergraduate students, especially in biology. The grant also supported consulting costs of the Institutional Animal Care Committee (IACC) veterinarian. 

Professional Development Funds were applied to enable the Associate Provost Research/Graduate Studies the ERGCO, Research Grants Officer and our Grants and communications facilitator to attend regular Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA) continuing education webinars and the CARA National conference. 

The Research Support Fund is absolutely crucial to the Research Office. Without these funds, faculty would not receive expert advice to the grant preparation phase, or pre/post award assistance and compliance.