Clarkson Integrator

Issue date: 11/24/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Sawyer Sutton Clarkson's Division of Research held a presentation of Financial Management last Friday, explaining spending compliance for externally funded projects.

This past Friday, the Division of Research at Clarkson held a presentation on Financial Management. The purpose of this meeting was to train faculty so that they could understand the rules and regulations that manage the spending of externally sponsored projects. Their main focus was on compliance for sponsored projects. Sponsored projects are research projects paid for by external funding, such as government grants. Much of Clarkson's research is funded through external sources.

Clarkson undergoes a yearly audit through a third-party in compliance with federal and state regulations. According to Kimberly Klatt, Research Compliance Officer at Clarkson, it is important to make sure that we are good stewards of the taxpayers' money with government funded research. As many financial institutions that were bailed out are discovering, when federal funding is granted, there is a great deal of oversight and scrutiny over how government money is spent.

Many students are unfamiliar with the process of compliance and all the effort that goes into it; however, anyone who is interested in doing graduate research for a university, or even working for a company that is granted federal funds for certain projects, will likely need to deal with compliance training.

One of the primary aspects of compliance consists of allocating how money is spent. For instance, if a box of gloves is needed for a chemistry research project, it is likely that those gloves will be used by other projects working in the same chemistry lab. For this reason, the cost of gloves must be proportionately split between the projects that will use the gloves. On the other hand, if the project needed a container to store pipettes that would only be used by that project, the price of the container should be charged in fully to that specific project.

These rules and regulations, along with more information on Clarkson's compliance practices, can be found on the Clarkson Department of Research web page, clarkson.edu/dor.

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