Open Access to Core Facilities: Town Hall Meeting
In March 2014, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by the provosts of the three CBC universities (Northwestern University, University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago) enabling open access to each other’s core facilities. Open access allows researchers at each university to use core facilities at partner universities at the same pricing and availability as researchers at the host institution. Each university agreed to waive the indirect (F&A) costs that would otherwise be charged to researchers for using core facilities at another institution. Besides a cost savings to researchers, the initiative increases the number of facilities available to researchers as well as increases utilization and efficiency of facility operations.
In June, 2014, core facility administrators from CBC universities hosted a Town Hall meeting (as part of CBC Tech Day) to discuss details of how this initiative will work. The goal of the meeting was to allow core directors and managers an opportunity to ask questions to senior administrators about the initiative. Approximately 50 core facility directors, managers and staff attended the meeting held at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Prior to the Q&A session, Aaron Rosen (Associate Department Administrator for Shared and Core Facilities at Northwestern University) made several brief announcements on how to manage purchase orders, payment processing and changes to the NIH Payment Management System. For more information on changes to NIH procedures, go to: http://www.northwestern.edu/asrsp/federal-initiatives/hhs-pms-subaccounts.html.
For a summary of the Questions and Answers session click here.
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