Current Initiatives
The implementation of Cayuse, an electronic Research Administration (eRA) system, to help support the administration and management of research and sponsored projects at Loyola University Chicago.
As many of you already know, at the beginning of October of 2024, Loyola University Chicago made the decision to invest in the Cayuse Research Administration system to eventually replace the existing systems used for research administration (e.g., Research Channel at the Health Science Campus, or PTAP at the Lakeshore and Water Tower campuses).
The overall objective of the eRA is to provide a single electronic solution for creating and submitting grant proposals and for establishing and managing grant awards, sub-awards, and a variety of contracts from receipt/set-up through project close out. We will also be implementing modular “add-ons” that allow us to integrate various regulatory elements of the grant (e.g., IACUC, IRB, IBC, Conflict of Interest, Tech Transfer, and more).
While we are still in the early stages of development and implementation, we are excited about this endeavor as it is expected to facilitate the grant submission process while ensuring optimal management of the project across its entire life cycle.
- Recruitment of a support FTE in ITS to provide support for the eRA implementation, interacting with both technical and functional teams.
- Creation of Cayuse-hosted environments. We have successfully worked with Cayuse to create two cloud-based environments that support Cayuse configuration and testing, to include its integration with our HR system. In addition, a third “environment” was created earlier this Spring to support the testing of specific modules, as they roll out.
- To date, things are going smoothly, with the plan to roll out the first two modules (Conflict-of-Interest (COI) and System-to-System (S2S) modules – the latter supports grant submissions to federal agencies that fall under Grants.gov) by later this Spring, early Summer.
- The grants administration team within ORS have already started working with grant administrators embedded in the Schools and departments to provide some initial training. As that nears completion, we will be providing guidance and training to faculty so they can familiarize themselves with what is currently in place, recognizing that full and complete implementation of Cayuse and all its modules, is expected to be completed in approximately another 18 months.
Access to the Research Channel (RC) and PTAP systems will remain until the new system adequately supports the functionalities desired to support grant/contract submissions and management.
Subsequent updates will be made when major milestones are met.
Facilities & Administration (F&A) costs are often recovered from funding agencies to help offset the University’s real costs of conducting research or doing the contracted work. Although the F&A recovery does not fully cover the University’s investment in research infrastructure, we recognized the value of returning some F&A collected back to the Units/PIs that generated such revenue. The Provost’s Office and a subgroup of the Council of Deans worked together to develop this F&A distribution plan, to allow us to reinvest in success and reward those individuals who contributed to the sum-total of F&A dollars recovered by Loyola University Chicago.
See more information here.