Chairs and Center Directors: As you know, Duke is a major recipient of federal research grants. As a recipient of these awards, we are accountable to sponsoring agencies for financial compliance with all appropriate agency regulations. We have addressed this responsibility, in part, by instituting a strong compliance program; aspects of the program have been discussed over the past several months in the Medical Center Executive Committee. Key components of the program include mandatory training of staff with grant-related financial responsibilities, a variety of compliance policies, and auditing to make sure people understand the rules. We believe we are doing a good job, but we must work to do even better. Any institution which fails to live up to its obligations in compliance runs the risk of financial penalties, damage to its reputation and loss of current and future funding. Recent examples of noncompliance and financial penalties imposed at Northwestern, Stanford and several other institutions reflect more intense federal scrutiny of institutions with funded research. The best way to insure our compliance with federal regulations is through an effective and comprehensive training program. A team representing Financial Services, the Office of Sponsored Programs, the Medical Center's Office of Grants & Contracts, the Office of Research Support and others is now developing two new Research Costing Compliance training programs:
You will be hearing about these important initiatives in the near future. Your support will be critical in the timely implementation of the programs.
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