The Dean's office would like to help facilitate the writing process. Although the PI is responsible for providing the research specific part of these grant applications, most also require extensive information about the institution, training and educational support, diversity initiatives, and outcomes. Our office has compiled boilerplate text about the institution and resources below. As always, please provide ample turnaround time to ensure timely completion if you request letters. Please use the linked documents as is or in a modified form in your applications.

When submitting proposals for grant funding or award nominations, most require including a letter of support from the institution. The Office of the Dean for the School of Medicine Basic Sciences recognizes this. To promptly provide these letters of support, please use the link below to complete a RedCap survey to ensure the forwarding of your request to the correct person. We ask that this survey be submitted four weeks before the submission deadline to provide ample time for revisions and proper forwarding. Requests for letters of support that ask for specific financial, space, or other material resource commitments from the institution should be submitted at least 30 days before the preferred grant submission date.

Please provide as much information about the funding mechanism or award as possible. Including your most recent CV is required, and a draft letter for use as a template is greatly encouraged.

School of Medicine Basic Sciences Letter of Support Request Survey

Templates and Style Guide:

Template documents are available for use in preparing your draft letter of support. They are offered as guidance, not rules. Also, VU and VUMC have adopted a Style Guide. It provides useful tips, such as language for how to refer to each entity (VU and VUMC) when writing drafts.

S10 Example Letter of Support (PDF)
Style Guide (PDF)

Studios are structured, dynamic sessions that combine relevant research experts in a particular methodology to focus on a specific research goal. Studios are intended to enhance research quality, improve funding success, increase publications, and generate new hypotheses.

Studio Types:

• Hypothesis Generation Studio (assist investigators with generating clear, concise, meaningful, and innovative research questions and hypotheses) 
• Design Studio (assist investigators with developing improved research protocols to address specific research hypotheses) 
• Specific Aims Studio (a critical review of the Specific Aims to provide a solid foundation for the investigator to develop a robust research proposal) 
• Grant Review Studio (a critical review of the research strategy and overall grantsmanship to enhance the chance of funding) 
• Manuscript Studio (a critical review of the draft manuscript to improve the chance for publication) 
• and more…

To request a Studio, submit a VICTR Resource Request; Click here for step-by-step guidance on completing the VRR. Please note that they typically need at least 3-4 weeks notice to schedule a Studio. You must log in to StarBRITE with your VUMC VUNET ID (Dual Identity).

For additional questions, please contact: Lesa Black, Studio Manager - lesa.black@vumc.org or 615-343-1899

Closeout of an award is the process by which NIH determines that the recipient and NIH have completed all applicable administrative actions and all required work of an award. It is the Principal Investigator's (PI) 's, along with the grant administrator's and the Sponsored Programs Administration (SPA) Office's responsibility to complete the closeout of a grant, contract, or cooperative agreement. The guidelines established by the agency are specific to the award, and you must follow them as appropriate. It may be necessary to work with the Office of Contracts and Grants Accounting (OCGA) and the SPA Awards Management Team for verification and/or submission of required reports.

NIH Closeout Report Requirements:

• Final Federal Financial Report (except for Fellowships) * You must be logged in to eRA Commons with the appropriate role(s) to complete these activities.
• Final Research Performance Progress Report  (except for Fellowships for which the Termination Notice will continue to serve as the Final Progress Report)
• Final Invention Statement and Certification (except for Training grants, Fellowships, and specific other programs-e.g., activity codes C06, R13, R25, S10)

Preparation for closeout should begin three months before the award's end date to forecast expenses accurately and to make any necessary adjustments to new entries. This time allowance also provides an opportunity to determine the necessity of a no cost extension. (See "No Cost Extension Guidelines" for further assistance.) If a no-cost extension is not needed, the award should be closed out per the sponsor's guidelines, and you should submit all relevant closeout reports no later than 120 days after the project end date. The required items' submission guidelines are in the Notice of Award Agreement. Failure to submit timely and accurate final reports may affect future funding to the organization and/or awards with the same PD/PI. Contact the SPA Award Management Team for additional assistance.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Please send any comments to Selene Colon in the Office of the Vice Dean.

A Quick Guide to Equipment Purchases on an NIH Research Grant

By Chuck Sanders and Robert Dortch

If you need to purchase capital equipment-currently defined by Vanderbilt University as equipment that costs $5,000 or more-from R01, R35, R21 or other types of NIH grants, there are three ways to do it:

When you apply for a non-modular grant that is more than $250,000 in direct costs per year you can include the equipment as a line item in an applicable year in the budget of the proposal. If you are applying for a modular grant (increments of $25,000) and you are applying for less than the maximum of $250,000/year (whether it be $225,000/year or $200,000/year), you can request an additional module of $25,000 in the particular year you plan to purchase the equipment (e.g., you could have a budget of $250,000 in Year 1 but a budget of $225,000 in Years 2-5). In the modular budget justification, you would clarify that the additional $25,000 module is for a specific piece of equipment. When your grant is funded, the direct funds for that award period will be available for the equipment purchase without any added approvals or re-budgeting required.
Even if you did not include equipment as a line item in a grant's budget, you can still spend funds on equipment as long as there is a year or more remaining before the grant ends. To do this you must notify the grants administrators in your pod and provide them with a quotation for the equipment you wish to purchase and a breakdown of the sources of the funds that will be used to pay for it. They will draft an internal letter requesting the re-budgeting of direct and indirect funds from one or more of your grants toward equipment. You will be asked to sign that letter and return it to your pod administrators. As part of this re-budgeting, the indirect costs that are associated with the funds being transferred into the equipment category get converted into direct costs for your grant. This means that for every $1 you spend on equipment on an NIH grant (direct costs), a percentage of the cost equal to the facilities and administrative rate (indirect costs) is converted to direct costs. For example, at the current 58.50% Vanderbilt F&A rate, for every $1 you spend on equipment, 63 cents come from direct cost and 37 cents come from indirect costs.
The NIH periodically makes available applications for Equipment Supplements, which are usually announced in the NIH Guide (you can subscribe here). These supplement applications allow for an award of additional funds to an existing NIH award that you can apply toward the purchase of equipment not included in the original application. Those funds, if awarded, are restricted to that specific purchase and cannot be re-budgeted for other uses.
Equipment purchase should be proportioned between grant and institutional resources based on the anticipated usage of the equipment for each project. Note that some other agencies/sponsors may have their own unique approval processes for capital equipment purchases.

NEW NIH DATA MANAGEMENT AND SHARING POLICY GUIDANCE

The new NIH DMS policy will apply to all research grant proposals (and the resulting funded projects) submitted starting January 25, 2023. Existing NIH grants (as of late 2022) will not require DMS plans or compliance with the new policy until they come up for competitive renewal on or after January 25. Then DMS plans will need to be included in both new and competitive renewal proposals and complied with if the proposal after funded. This policy applies only to research grants, not training, fellowships, infrastructure, or instrument grants.

The policy dictates how data generated using support from these grants must be managed and shared. "Data" is defined in the new policy as "Recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications." The NIH definition excludes "data not necessary (or of sufficient quality) to validate and replicate research findings," laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, and physical objects.

The critical points of this policy that are likely to impact scientists working in the School of Medicine Basic Sciences are:

• All new and competing grant proposals must include a plan based on the NIH DMS form template. You can access the current version here.
• Compliance with the plan will need to be reported by the PI in the annual required progress reports to NIH (RPPRs).
• PIs must deposit all data and associated metadata into a paper and/or one or more publicly accessible repositories that comply with the "F.A.I.R." principle (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). NIH provides examples of repositories on its website.
• At the end of a grant cycle (two to five years for most NIH research grants), the PI must deposit all unpublished scientific data generated during that cycle in a publicly-accessible repository.
• Revising an existing DMS plan during competitive renewal or mid-way through an active award is possible.
• You can request funds to cover the cost of executing your DMS plan in your grant application. Your budget may cover the costs of curating data, developing supporting documentation, handling metadata, formatting for a repository, and preserving/sharing data through repositories.

You can find additional information regarding DMS policies on the NIH DMS website, including special guidance regarding handling clinical and proprietary research data.

VBS DMS Policy Guidance Webinar

DMS Policy Webinar Slides

OTHER RESOURCES

Vanderbilt Office of Research Integrity and Compliance - recommendations for the new NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy

DMPTool - A free, open-source, online resource to help create data management plans.

NIH Sample Data Management Plans - Example DMPs including clinical, human, and non-human genetics and secondary use plans.

Data Management and Sharing Plan Checklist for Researchers - The NIH DMSP Guidance Working Group created a checklist to help researchers with the six required elements in the NIH policy.

NIH-supported Scientific Data Repositories - A NIH-provided list of repositories and guidance on selecting a data repository.

NIH Allowable Costs for Data Management and Sharing - Details on the types of data-related budgeting you can include in the budget justification of grant applications.

NNLM Research Data Management On-Demand Classes - Learn research data management in classes you can take at your own pace. Explore open science, data curation and documentation, data sharing and publishing, and more.

NIH DMS Plan and Policy Data Terms - A Guide created by the NIH DMSP Guidance Working Group to the terminology used in the NIH DMSP.

Creative Data Solutions (CDS) - CDS, a Vanderbilt Shared Resource Core, can assist with data annotation, structured and unstructured data deposition, open source code, FAIR, and more.

BioVU NIH Repository Data Sharing Guide - A guide with instructions and sample language to include in Data Management in Sharing plans.

Generalist Repository Comparison Chart

Most grant applications require extensive information about the institution, training and educational support, and shared resources. The Dean's office has compiled text and links to institutional resources, which are available below. Click on the links below to access text and supporting documents. Please use the linked documents as is or in a modified form in your applications.