The Office of Sponsored Projects is combining institutional expertise, connected systems and continuous improvement to make sponsored projects easier to navigate.
A sponsored project can generate hundreds of individual actions—from preparing a proposal and securing institutional approvals to establishing an award, issuing subawards and responding to changing sponsor requirements.
For faculty and research teams, however, the fundamental questions are often much simpler: What information is needed? Where does the request stand? And who needs to act next?
“Our responsibility is to make the sponsored-project process as clear and manageable as possible for faculty and research teams,” said Brent K. Brown, assistant vice president for research and director of Sponsored Projects. “That means continually looking at our systems and processes, identifying where researchers encounter barriers, and working across the University to create better solutions.”
The U Research Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) is working to make those answers clearer. By connecting research administration expertise with thoughtful system and process design, the office is reducing manual work, improving transparency and helping researchers move sponsored projects forward.
“The goal is to make it easier for faculty and departments to move their work forward and know what is needed and who needs to act,” said Isabella Johnsen, associate director of Systems & Business Operations in OSP. “We also need to make sure the information is there for the offices responsible for compliance, award management and reporting.”
Connecting the sponsored-project lifecycle
OSP works with faculty and departments from the earliest stages of a sponsored project through the conclusion of the award. The office also coordinates with other units across the U and communicates directly with sponsors.
That position gives OSP a broad view of the sponsored-project lifecycle—and an early view of where information is missing, a process is creating unnecessary work or a handoff between offices is not functioning as it should. Because OSP works across proposals, awards, compliance, subawards and sponsor interactions, it is uniquely positioned to identify where information can be shared, where processes can be simplified and where technology can improve coordination across multiple offices. That perspective also allows OSP to connect systems and processes across the research enterprise. Rather than viewing proposals, awards, compliance reviews, purchasing and financial management as separate activities, OSP works to ensure information moves between them in ways that reduce administrative burden while supporting institutional oversight and sponsor requirements.
eProposal and eAward are core University research administration applications developed and maintained by OSP and UIT. Together, they help connect that work.
A sponsored project begins in eProposal, where the U collects project information, secures internal approvals and identifies potential compliance requirements. For many federal proposals, faculty and research administrators use Cayuse S2S to prepare and submit the application package to Grants.gov, while eProposal supports the University’s internal review and approval process.
After OSP completes its review, information from eProposal is sent to PeopleSoft and provides the foundation for the sponsored project record used by eAward. This connection also allows eAward to support preliminary projects before the final award is received.
eAward supports preliminary projects, new award setup, award modifications, subawards, compliance reviews and other actions throughout the life of an award. Faculty, departments, OSP, Grants and Contracts Accounting and other offices can work from the same transaction, see its status and understand what still needs to happen.
Together, the systems create greater continuity between proposal development and award administration.
Building a better process
Before eAward was introduced, award transactions often relied on emails, phone calls, paper forms and separate tracking methods. Faculty and administrators could have difficulty determining the status of a request, while OSP staff managed manual compliance checks and disconnected subaward processes.
After evaluating several commercial software options, OSP developed eAward with University Information Technology. OSP continues to lead the business requirements and priorities as University processes and sponsor requirements change.
The decision allowed OSP to build around the U’s research administration practices and continue changing the system as those practices evolved. Faculty and department administrators can follow a request, see where it is in the process and know when someone needs to act. Once a project is set up, the project numbers are also available in eAward. The History tab keeps the requests, documents and communication together from the initial preliminary project or award setup through later modifications and subawards.
Much of that work focuses on reducing the amount of administrative navigation required of faculty and department staff. When information can move automatically between systems, users spend less time determining where information is stored, who is responsible for the next step or whether a requirement has already been addressed. The result is greater transparency throughout the award lifecycle and fewer manual steps for research teams. It is more than a digital version of an existing form. It is a process designed around how sponsored-project work moves across the U.
“These systems are never really finished,” Johnsen said. “Every process change, sponsor requirement or operational change creates an opportunity to make the experience better for faculty and staff and make sure our systems evolve alongside those changes. We work across offices and with UIT to turn those needs into practical solutions.”
Turning policy into workable solutions
Maintaining these systems requires both technical knowledge and a deep understanding of research administration.
When a new federal requirement, sponsor policy or operational issue emerges, OSP leaders and the staff who perform the work determine what it means for the U and how the process should operate. Johnsen then translates those decisions into system requirements and works with UIT through development, business testing, implementation, training and future updates. The work often involves serving as a bridge between research administrators, compliance specialists, and software developers. A new sponsor requirement or policy decision may ultimately become a data field, workflow, approval path, notification, reporting capability within a system. Building those requirements directly into the process helps ensure compliance expectations are supported through system design rather than relying entirely on manual intervention.
That work extends beyond eProposal and eAward. For example, eAward brings IRB information from ERICA and COI information from BRR into the transaction so the department does not have to look it up and enter it again. ERICA and BRR remain the systems where those reviews are managed, and the responsible offices still make the decisions.
The connections are part of the day-to-day work. Once GCA establishes a project number in PeopleSoft, it is available in eAward. eAward also provides a link to Management Reports, where faculty and departments can view the financial information for the project. OSP also worked with UShop to add the eAward transaction number to the purchasing record so staff can connect the purchasing activity back to the original subaward request.
These connections allow faculty and department staff to move more easily between administrative and financial information. Someone can follow a request in eAward, find the project number once setup is complete and move directly to Management Reports when they need financial details. eAward and Management Reports are separate tools, but the connection between them helps users access information without navigating multiple disconnected processes.
The broader goal is to make related information easier to find without trying to make one system do everything. OSP’s role is often less about building a single application and more about ensuring information moves efficiently between the systems that support research administration.
The value of capturing and connecting information becomes particularly evident when requirements change. During a recent review of proposed federal policy changes, the University needed to identify fixed-amount subawards. Because that information had already been captured within the eAward transaction process, the affected agreements could be identified through reporting rather than requiring departments to manually review individual records. More broadly, the ability to capture information once and use it for operational processing, compliance oversight and institutional reporting helps reduce duplicate effort while improving data reliability.
The goal is not only to respond when requirements change, but also to build systems and processes that can adapt as research administration evolves. Capturing consistent information and creating connections between systems gives the University greater flexibility when new sponsor, regulatory or institutional needs emerge.
Choosing the right solution
Innovation does not always mean building a system internally. The University uses both internally developed and vendor systems. The right option depends on what the process needs, what products are available and which systems need to connect.
Cayuse S2S is one example of adopting an external system for federal proposal submission. OSP is also leading a request for proposals for an artificial intelligence-enabled contract lifecycle management system.
The new system could support agreement intake, review, negotiation, approvals, tracking and retention involving OSP, the Research Security Office, Office of General Counsel, Technology Licensing Office and Institutional Review Board. Because several of these offices also manage agreements outside sponsored projects, the effort has the potential to improve contract processes across the broader U Research enterprise.
That balance—building, buying and adapting based on the needs of researchers and the institution—reflects OSP’s larger approach.
Innovation in research administration is often invisible when it works well. It appears as a clearer request, a faster handoff, fewer duplicate entries or the ability to answer a new compliance question without asking faculty and staff to reconstruct information.
Research administration is continually evolving as sponsor expectations, federal regulations, and institutional priorities change. By maintaining close involvement in both business processes and system design, OSP can adapt workflows, data collection and reporting capabilities as new requirements emerge. Continuous improvement helps ensure the University’s research infrastructure remains responsive without creating unnecessary work for researchers and departments.
Researchers may never see most of the systems, integrations, and process decisions working behind the scenes. Yet those decisions shape how research administration functions across the University. For OSP, successful systems work is often invisible. It means researchers can spend less time navigating administrative processes and more time advancing the work those processes are designed to support.
Working on a sponsored project?
Find guidance, tools and resources from the Office of Sponsored Projects.
