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FAQs
- May a UNC university submit more than one proposal?
- There is no limit on the number of proposals submitted by a UNC institution or the number of proposals any not-for-profit or for profit institution can participate in as a partner.
- Will funding be provided for the participation of community and independent colleges and other profit and not-for profit institutions?
- Yes, a portion of the funds, as requested in the proposal budget, may be allocated for their participation. The prime institution (a UNC campus) must be the fiscal agent for the grant.
- What type of personnel costs may be included in budgets?
- Summer salary for faculty (up to 3 months, each month 1/9 of salary)
- Faculty Release time from instruction
- Graduate students
- Post Doc's
- Undergraduate students
- Research Associates (non-teaching faculty)
- Education Specialists
- Technicians
- Technical and scientific support staff
- Information Technology staff
- Training Specialists
- Administrators in management/leadership role
- Qualified Outside Consultants
- What type of personnel costs are not allowable?
- Costs for overload for faculty and indirect costs will not be allowable.
- If computing or specialized IT services are to be provided, may hardware maintenance and software licenses be charged to the grant?
- New or additional hardware maintenance and/or software license and maintenance costs are allowable expenses.
- If computing or other services are to be delivered, upon an award, what information should be provided in the proposal describing the levels of service?
- Each submitting prime university will submit a statement describing the service level to be provided. The instructions for this statement is on "FAQs, Forms, and Docs" section of the initiative the web site.
- Will the grant support program/curriculum development?
- The development of new programs/curricula at a UNC university is not an allowable expense on the grant. However, the development of new courses, tracks, or concentrations and/or enhancements to existing courses, tracks, concentrations, or degree programs/curricula are allowable expenses. [NOTE: Clarifying language in blue added on January 30, 2004]
- Will the grant support educational activities at Community Colleges in North Carolina?
- The development or enhancement of educational activities at Community Colleges associated with the technology or application of computational science, computer science, high performance computing, and information systems will be permitted activities.
- Can the proposal be delivered through the mail or in person?
- The proposal must be submitted through the on-line submission process. A link to the on-line submission application can be found on the initiative website.
- Will written results of the proposal reviews be made available to the submitting prime UNC university?
- After the Office of the President announces the awards of the initiative, copies of the review reports will be sent to the submitting prime UNC universities.
- The following FAQs were posted on February 4, 2004
- What happens if there is technical problems that prevent me from uploading my documents on February 15th?
- If a technical problem occurs on the weekend of Feb 14-15 which prohibits the submission of a proposal, please contact Paul Hudy via phone (919-962-4583) or email (cs_proposal@northcarolina.edu) by 10 a.m. Monday morning, Feb. 16th. If it is confirmed that a technical problem occurred - not attributable to user error - and this prevented the submission by the 4 p.m. deadline, we will make arrangements on Monday for immediate submission for all proposals affected.
- How should lists of references or citations for the proposal be handled?
- A list of proposal citations/references may be uploaded as a separate attachment. Please name the attachment as references.pdf, citations.pdf or similar. This citation list would not be counted in the 15 page limit for the proposal body.
- Our proposal has several collaborators included, most of whom will receive a share of the proposed funding. How should this funding should be reflected in the budget sheet?
- A budget sheet is required for each partner for each year of the proposal. [partner1-year1, partner1-year2, partner2-year1, etc] Also, a summary budget sheet is required for each year of the proposal. [year1-summary, year2-summary]
- How will funds will be provided to community colleges and other collaborators?
- The UNC prime campus is responsible for distributing the money to its collaborators and developing the appropriate sub-contracts with its collaborators to cover the collaborator's role in the proposal. These agreements can be developed and finalized after the announcment of the award and are subject to the approval of UNC General Administration.
- Is the goal of the initiative to support only "large proposals" or will "smaller" proposals ($100K per year) be considered?
- There is no pre-defined lower limit on the proposals.
- The following FAQs were posted on February 5, 2004
- In the guidelines, it states that grant funds cannot be used to fund a faculty member's salary, but in the FAQ's it states that funding from this initiative can cover release time for a faculty member. Can you clarify the difference for me?
- We talked a bit about this at the technical meeting. Here is a simple example that hopefully illustrates what we intend:
Faculty member "Dr. A" is assigned to teach 3 courses a semester and at that their campus this is considered full time (FTE 1.0). "Dr. A" is also an appropriate faculty member to participate in the grant -- let's say an estimated 1/3 of their time over the course of the grant -- say 2 years.
We will not fund "overload time" - in "Dr. A's" case 1.333 FTE. We want to avoid all overload time or funding.
We will not allow the grant to fund any of "Dr. A's" salary associated with his teaching duties. In other words, we don't want to "swap" funding sources so we have a case where the grant is funding non-grant related activities.
We will allow the grant to fund the "re-assignment/release" time of "Dr. A" from 1/3 of his teaching duties to work on the grant for the equivalent time (.33 FTE). The assumption here is that a replacement is hired/found to backfill the non-grant teaching portion (using non-grant sources), there is appropriate department approval, etc.
- The following FAQs were posted on February 7, 2004
- How many letters of support should be accompany the proposal?
- This FAQ is to clarify the requirements for letters of support in the RFP.
As stated in the RFP, letters of support are required from the Chief Academic Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Research Officer of each UNC institution involved in the proposal. [3 single letters each signed by the respective individual or 1 letter signed by all 3 individuals is acceptable] For each independent, community college, or other non-UNC partner, a letter of support is required only from that insitution's appropriate signatory authority.
Unfortunately, the communication sent out late last week on this topic was incorrect.
There are no changes to this requirement. If due to this misinformation, a submitter is having trouble procuring the letters by the proposal deadline, please call Paul Hudy (919-962-4583) or email (egapmh@northcarolina.edu) so that other arrangements can be discussed.
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