Why is SPA Realigning?

SPA’s realignment has two main objectives – improving service to faculty and departments, and improving the quality of work life for SPA staff. 

My discussions with many of you – including research associate deans, faculty, and administrators, along with the results of recent customer satisfaction surveys, indicate that while SPA is appropriately seen as a valued partner in the research administration enterprise and there is genuine appreciation for SPA expertise in many areas, there are nonetheless opportunities for enhancing the service we provide.  Some of the areas that have been sources of frustration including not knowing who in SPA to contact for a given transaction; having to work with many different SPA staff to handle projects from different agencies; and receiving differing answers to the same question from different SPA staff.  Turnaround on award processing and subaward processing has also been cited as an issue.

My discussions with SPA staff have indicated that our grant administrators genuinely enjoy their jobs and love helping faculty and administrators, but are frustrated by the lack of variety in their positions, the lack of institutional adherence to published university policies (particularly surrounding late proposals), high workloads, limited compensation, limited professional development and cross-training, and insufficient opportunities for career advancement. 

The realignment strategy is designed to address many of these issues.  Moving to a constituency-based organizational structure allows departments and units and SPA staff to build cohesive long-term relationships and to better understand and address the challenges that each unit faces.  In this model, SPA staff can become knowledgeable about the sponsored projects portfolios of the units and the faculty; and investigators and administrators will be able to have a single point of contact within SPA (or in our case, a limited number of contacts).  Each staff member being able to handle a broader range of agencies allows SPA to better provide backup when there are absences or vacancies, facilitates promotional readiness of staff, and deepens professional skills.  A renewed focus on internal and external training for our staff, the addition of the levels of “Principal Grants Administrator,” and the role of “EFS Specialist” all help to address the need for SPA to be more in tune with the career advancement opportunities and professional development of its staff.   

To move into this structure, significant work was done to analyze the workload of our office and to ensure that work is distributed equitably and appropriately among the various levels of staff.  This workload will be reviewed periodically and workloads adjusted to accommodate differences in sponsored projects growth among our constituent units.  Ensuring a fair workload not only helps ensure that responsiveness is addressed and achieved, but also helps identify any problematic areas requiring additional assistance.  It is also critical to staff satisfaction.

The constituency-based organizational model selected here is a very common one nationally (more common than the sponsor-oriented model that SPA has used for a number of years) and one in which I have had great success in the past.  Like many peer organizations, I have chosen to keep business and industry agreements separate from the rest of the portfolio, as well as State Agreements.  The staff serving these areas are thus able to specialize in the issues, challenges, and solutions inherent in these types of agreements.

We look forward to moving to this new model.  Your patience will be appreciated as staff transition into their new roles, and take on the challenges associated with learning agencies that they may not have dealt with in the past.  Within a few months, we believe the benefits will become obvious to all concerned.  We will be evaluating the model near the end of FY09 to assess your satisfaction as well as that of SPA staff with the new model.  

If you have any questions at any time, please do not hesitate to contact me at 4-1648 or pwebb@umn.edu. 

- Pamela