Indirect Costs of Grants

To change the portion of paragraph 15 in section 3.09.04.1 ACADEMIC DIVISION GRANTS: APPROVAL PROCESS of the Academic Affairs Handbook from:

An eight percent (8%) administrative fee will be assessed on all grant proposals. These are indirect costs charged to the grant and should be included under the "sponsored" column. Funds generated from the administrative fee surcharge are used to support faculty research.

to read as follows:

The federally negotiated and approved rate (currently 30%) should be used to calculate indirect costs and overhead expenses for grants. Acknowledging that sometimes it may not be possible or prudent to charge the approved rate, the university recognizes that some flexibility in the indirect cost policy is required. Therefore, a discretionary reduction in the indirect cost rate may be allowed under certain circumstances. In order to justify a rate lower than 30%, the administration may require input from the principal investigator and the program administrator for the funding agency and, when justified, the indirect cost rate can be reduced to a minimum of 8%.

If the minimum eight percent indirect rate is charged, then the entire amount collected will be allocated to the Faculty Research Program. Any indirect costs collected above the 8% will be equally divided and distributed to fund additional grant resources, services, and workshops and to support the research efforts of the departments and schools who receive the grant awards.