LSA Responsible Conduct of Research and Scholarship (RCRS)

Responsible Conduct of Research: LSA’s Program Since 2011, required for undergraduates, grad students, and post-docs if any funding received from NSF or NIH. This includes NSF fellowships. Expectation that new training will occur at every stage of one’s career (i.e. undergrad, grad student, and post-doc)

How to Be Compliant Fulfill requirement by taking a university course UC 415 (Natural Science) and UC 416 (Social Science) are College’s course offering Departments may have their own course— must be approved by Dean’s Office Courses taken at other institutions do not apply at UM, nor does PEERRS training.

How to Be Compliant Some departments have created their own course: Chem 415, Earth 495, Psych 506,etc. PIBS 503 satisfies the requirement for MCDB It’s the funding department, not the appointing dept. responsible for the training LSA students who are doing research in other parts of the University may take their training instead (e.g. College of Engineering does workshops)

Required topics for Federal Program appropriate citation of sources and avoiding plagiarism authorship and publication practices and responsibilities acquisition, management, ownership and sharing of data research misconduct, including data fabrication and falsification personal, professional and financial conflicts of interest supervisory and mentoring relationships and responsibilities responsibilities of collaborative research protection of human beings and welfare of laboratory animals when research involves human participants and animal subjects

Current Process of Notification ITS developed queries to identify students and post-docs who are working on NSF or NIH grants One query is for appointments and the other query is for awards (e.g. NSF GSRFP) Queries available after the 6 th of each month and generated by Dean’s Office.

Improving Compliance For first few years, went to the dept. from LSA Dean’s Office with a list, asking grad coordinators or other contacts to reach out to students and PIs to tell them of their responsibility to complete training. As of Summer 2014, now goes directly to the student/post-doc, the PI, the KeyAd, and the grad coordinator outlining training need.

Improving Compliance Additional text to be added to both Post-doc Offer Letter and the GSRA Offer Letter: For post-doc offer letter… “If you are funded by NSF or NIH while you are a post-doctoral fellow, you must complete training in the Responsible Conduct of Research and Scholarship (RCRS) per the America COMPETES Act. In LSA, this requires successful completion of a course. Please check with your administrative department to learn more about how to fulfill this requirement.”

Improving Compliance For GSRA Offer Letter… “If you are funded by NSF or NIH while you are a graduate student, you must complete training in the Responsible Conduct of Research and Scholarship (RCRS) per the America COMPETES Act. In LSA, this requires successful completion of a course. You may have already satisfied this as part of Rackam’s RCRS requirements: policies/section5#53 Please check with your administrative department to learn more about how to fulfill this requirement if you have not yet done so.”

How to Be Compliant Rackham RCRS Requirement Rackham instituted a policy for doctoral students that says any student who began in Fall 2014 and later must have a course in RCRS before achieving candidacy. Departments can determine what the course looks like but should ensure there are 8 hours of face to face contact between faculty and students and with more than one faculty. The Grad Chair must sign off on candidacy forms to confirm the requirement is complete.

How Are We Doing? Numbers & Percentage of Total Notes: *Waive = requirement waived by Dean’s Office for various reasons. Most often because of timing (e.g. student identified for training but graduating in the same term or a post-doc whose appointment was ending in the next month). StatusUndergrads Grad Students Post-docsStaffTotal% Complete26 (2.4%)493 (45.8%)71 (6.6%)4 (.4%) % Yet to Complete17 (1.6%)55 (5.1%)26 (2.4%)NA989.00% Left UM Before Training Complete 19 (1.8%)77 (7.1%)79 (7.3%)NA % Waive*104 (9.7%)56 (5.2%)34 (3.2%)16 (1.5%) % Total166 (15.4%)681 (63.2%)210 (19.5%)20 (1.9%) %

Responsible Conduct of Research: LSA’s Program How can we increase compliance – Is there an awareness of the RCRS requirement? – Should more direct communication happen with faculty? – Can research staff help with communication?