News
04/19/2011 - Migration from GroupWise to Outlook
UMHS is in the process of making a migration from using Groupwise as our main email and calendaring software to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook 2010.
Outlook 2010 will enhance collaboration across UMHS and beyond. Changing from Novell Groupwise to Microsoft Outlook will allow for sharing address books and calendaring between UMHS and UM Campus as well as lay the foundation for greater support of a wider range of mobile devices and prepare us for future communication technologies. The Outlook software will support Mac and PC users equally.
The dates for the migration are Spring of this year. There is a website that provides important information and updates regarding the migration. It is located at http://www.med.umich.edu/u/outlook/.
In preparation, ULAM will take a look at all email lists and make sure they are up to date.
For those of you who have created or managed a list, we will be sending you a list of members in the group for a review and update if necessary and this email will come from Anne Sodemann.
07/01/2010 - Policy on Quality Assurance Fee (QAF)
As of July 1st 2010, a 20% QAF will be assessed on all internally funded Medical School projects only (funds 10000, 30000, 40000, 54010).
QAF will not be assessed on externally funded projects in funds 20000 and 25000.
If you have any questions regarding the policy, please contact Anitha Chennat anich@umich.edu (6-1698).
Effective 07/01/2010 - Federal F&A Rates Change and Implementation
The new rate schedule is:
54.5% now through 6/30/2011
55.5% 7/1/2011 - 6/30/2014 or until our next rate is negotiated
How to handle:
*
For proposals to Federal Agencies:*
April 1, the Medical School will require that future years use the new
rates. (Between now and then you will be allowed to use the old rate so
you don't have to redo work already done, but you are encouraged to use
the new rates.)
As in the past, do NOT prorate years between 2 F&A rates. Use the start
date of the budget period and apply that rate for the year. On the next
budget period switch to the new rate. If this is a hardship on your
project, please check with us ahead of time. This should only affect
projects for a short period of transition time.
*For proposals already at Federal Agencies:*
If you are asked for JIT information including a budget, move forward
with the new rate (under the same principles as above using one rate in
a budget period).
If you are not asked for a budget, we will ask DRDA to negotiate as best
as they are able for an award that reflects the new rate beginning with
budget dates after 7/1/2011. However, not all agencies will agree to
the $$ increase related to the request and we do not want to take DC
away from study teams, so we will support that if the award notice is
awarded at 54.5% for the duration of the project and there is no additional ability to change, the project will run at 54.5%.
*For Currently Active Projects:*
To be clear, to benefit PIs and research teams, if a project is ongoing
at an awarded rate and there are no additional dollars available to
increase the F&A rate, which there likely will not be, we will not see
these projects moving to the higher recovery rate.
*Special Considerations:*
Remember for DoD we are still under a restriction that maximum recovery of 35% of total costs for F&A. With a rate of 54.5% we were very close
to this cap, depending on exclusions. At a rate of 55.5% we will run
into this problem more often. Please contact our office if you are
unsure what the implication to your project is and how to handle.