Research Programs - General Information

• Research and Sponsored Projects

The Office of Research and Sponsored Projects is dedicated to assisting California State University, Northridge faculty and staff in obtaining research and creative activity support from federal, state, corporate, and foundation sponsored programs.

For post-award information, please visit The University Corporation, Sponsored Programs website.

Important Notice: If a proposal you are submitting requires electronic submission through the grants.gov system, please contact the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects immediately at x2901 for special instructions. Please be aware that additional lead time is required for all grants.gov submissions.

NSF has just issued a new publication, Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide, that collectively replaces their Grant Proposal Guide and Grant Policy Manual. It is effective for proposals submitted on or after January 5, 2008. You can download it from the following website:

http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf081

Please note the following significant change: Chapter II – Section B.2, Proposal Margin and Spacing Requirements, has new guidance specifying the fonts that may be used when preparing an NSF proposal.

THE LARGE GRANT POLICY HAS BEEN REVISED AS OF JANUARY 1, 2007.

Background: The Large Grant Policy was established through the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects as a means to return a portion of recovered indirect costs (aka F&A* costs) generated by externally funded grants and contracts to the principal investigators/project directors of those projects. The policy returns F&A in the form of release time to allow faculty “…tocompete effectively for grant or contract support with peers at 'research institutions' who enjoy teaching loads considerably less than the standard CSU twelve unit teaching load.”

The original Large Grant Policy required faculty to secure an award with at least $30,000 of direct costs and the university’s federally negotiated F&A rate in order to receive release time. In 1997 the policy was revised to base generation of release time on two threshold amounts of F&A regardless of the direct cost total or F&A rate applied.

In Fall 2006, the thresholds were raised to offset increased costs of release time. The new thresholds are applicable to proposals submitted on or after January 1, 2007. Existing awards will not be subject to the new thresholds, and will continue to be held to the 1997 thresholds through the award’s expiration.